


fire and flesh

by hazy_daisy



Series: blood of zeus character studies [2]
Category: Blood of Zeus (Cartoon)
Genre: Angst, Canonical Character Death, Character Study, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, fkjghdsjkf, giving seraphim some friends bc he deserves them :), graphic depictions of violence checked off for mild body horror, hurt/comfort/hurt again, i call this one 'seraphim is hot and did nothing wrong', i've had ENOUGH of the incest in the boz tag it's time for some CHARACTER STUDIES!!!, idk dude pretty much the whole gang is here it's just through seraphim's eyes, long fic, mentions of the myth of orion, no beta we die like ariana, spoilers lmao, that's it. that's the fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-27
Updated: 2020-11-28
Packaged: 2021-03-10 02:02:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 22,324
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27736543
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hazy_daisy/pseuds/hazy_daisy
Summary: The chase culminates on a cliff—Seraphim looking out over dark waters as the guards close in behind him. Seraphim is from the forest, but the ocean has been his only companion these last years. If the choice is between men and nature? He will throw himself into the sea.He is battered and bruised by the time he washes ashore, but he picks himself up and drags himself forward. His wounds sting from the salt water. Survival. That is his only thought. His only goal.He drags himself into a cave, and what he sees there sends a shiver of primal fear down his spine. It’s a corpse, but not like any corpse he’s ever seen before. (And he’s seen many.) What he sees before him is huge, and bloated, like some monstrous creature of eons long since past.It must have been washed ashore, he thinks, under the delirium and the pain and the horror. Just like him.alternate title: seraphim is baby and did nothing wrong
Relationships: Seraphim & Adriana (Blood of Zeus), Seraphim & Hera (Blood of Zeus), Seraphim (Blood of Zeus) & Original Character(s)
Series: blood of zeus character studies [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1994839
Comments: 17
Kudos: 36





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> ariana (the woman who saved seraphim) was not given a lot of info, so, as with everything we weren't given info on in this fic, i made it up <3
> 
> her sister is named helena not for any particular reason, but i did happen to be thinking of helen of troy so. fun fact. also chances were that ariana was the youngest sister? but if she was, she's not anymore. this is my canon now and i do what i want xoxo
> 
> this thing got SO much longer than expected so i'm splitting it up. first half today, and i'll post the second half tonight.

In Seraphim’s first memory, his eyes are closed, and everything around him is warm. He is small—small enough that he fits snugly up against the warm fur of the bear, tucked between her cubs. He is warm. He is safe. 

-

Seraphim has a difficult time learning to speak. He babbles, like any baby would, but his first words are slower than Ariana expected—she was young, when her sister spoke her first words, but she is sure that Helena was stringing more words together than Seraphim does, at two years of age. 

It takes a while before Ariana realizes that this lack of speech is because she’s barely spoken to the child. Taking the baby away on a whim had been stressful, to say the least, and the last thing on her mind had been nurturing him. Out in the wild, she knew they should’ve been safe, but talking out loud had been… stressful. The urge to stay quiet had been illogical, but she’d indulged it all the same.

Even when the bears were there, when Ariana knew exactly how far they were from the nearest town, when Seraphim started to babble excitedly at her, she’d barely broken her silence. Ariana is no storyteller, and no nurturing mother. The constant crying had been a formidable opponent to any maternal feelings she might have had for the child. She’d only offer Seraphim passing comments, and though she was glad to hear him speak, she had no excitement to offer. Had Seraphim been with his mother, he probably would have been plied with requests to say  _ mama _ . Ariana is not his mother. He is her ward, not her child. She has no desire to be called  _ mama _ by this unfortunate prince. 

She had the sense to name him, at least. She remembers vividly; being huddled up against the wall of their cave, baby in her arms, and looking down to realize that his mother had never had a chance to give him a name. His father, either. She remembers being distinctly uncomfortable with this responsibility, this responsibility that should go to a parent, not merely a guardian-by-chance. She remembers thinking of a cousin of hers, Serapheim with his dark hair and dark eyes, and deciding that  _ Seraphim _ is as good a name as any.

“ _ I’m sorry, Seraphim, _ ” she’d whispered to him, softly, as if speaking loudly would break him. 

-

“Not very eloquent, are you,” she mutters to the child, one day, holding his tiny body against herself to preserve him from the cold. Seraphim is near two years old, and all he’s really been able to say successfully is—

“No!” Seraphim exclaims, burbling happily. He reaches up, yanks at Ariana’s hair—Ariana sighs, long-suffering, and shifts her hold on the child to extract her hair from his small hand. 

“I—I suppose you’re going to need more than this, if you’re going to learn to speak,” she says, quietly. She is still unused to being loud, even with the bears lying nearer to the entrance of the cave. 

Seraphim giggles, uncomprehending.

“ _ Fuck, _ ” Ariana whispers, letting her head fall back against the cave wall, and Seraphim echoes back, “ _ Fuck! _ ”, joyful as ever.

Ariana is no storyteller, and no doting mother, but reality begins to set in. She’s spent a year caring for the child in physical needs alone—worrying about stocking up food, about keeping him warm and clothed, more than anything else. It had hardly occurred to her that she would need to  _ raise  _ him. That hadn’t been the plan. The plan had hardly been more than ‘take the baby and run so that he doesn’t get killed’. Now, though… Ariana struggles to remember what you’re supposed to do with children. She was a good enough midwife. She’d never gotten the chance to be a nurse.

She’s an older sister, but she had only had a few years’ advantage on Helena, and she wouldn’t have been very helpful even if she’d wanted to help raise her. Still, she remembers her parents telling the both of them stories, remembers them singing to her, and she tries her best at it.

Ariana’s throat is dry and raspy, and her voice is deeper than she remembers it, when she clears her throat to tell a proper story. Seraphim will not mind, she knows. Seraphim, for all that he cries and makes her life miserable, has never known any better, and knows how to be content with the life that she’s carved for them in this cave. 

Unsure of how to start, Ariana clears her throat again and turns to the only story that she can trust herself to tell by heart.

“ _ When the world was new, the gods defeated the Titans… _ ”

-

When Seraphim is cognizant of himself, able to walk, able to help gather berries and to wrestle with the bear cubs, his words still do not come easily—but, if he hunts for them hard enough, they will come.

“Ariana,” he asks, one day, huddled by a fire that Ariana has made with his arms around his knees, “Your stories have… cities. Where are cities?”

Ariana freezes for a moment. Seraphim is not good with words, but he knows how to pick up Ariana’s cues, and he realizes that this was not a good question to ask. He’s not quite sure how to rescind it, though, and Ariana has an answer for him before he can take it back.

“Far away,” she says. “I’ll take you to them, one day. But not for a while.”

Seraphim nods. In his mind, he tucks away this information, and decides not to touch on the subject.

Later, when he is old enough to comprehend the concept of  _ lying _ , he wonders what made Ariana sound so strained. Maybe, he thinks, there are no other people. There are no cities. Maybe it’s only him and Ariana on earth, and she’s lied to him to make him happier.

-

“Ariana,” Seraphim asks, “why are your…” his mind goes blank, and he points mutely at her body.

Ariana’s eyebrows press together, and she offers, “Clothes?”

The word is a relief to have in his brain and in his mouth, and Seraphim finishes his question. “Why are your clothes different from mine?”

He is four, now, old enough to notice this sort of thing. Ariana’s clothes are softer than his, he knows that. They’re more colorful, even if the color is faded from sun and from wear. . They cover her shoulders and her chest, and they’re made of something he can’t find the words for, while Seraphim is clothed in only the roughly-cut pelts of animals that the bear has hunted down. 

“I had to make your clothes, Seraphim,” Ariana answers him. “And I’ve never had to make clothes before. These…” she looks down, lifting the material of her chiton just slightly. “This is from a city.”

“Will I have clothes from a city, Ariana?” Seraphim asks, eyes wide.

“One day,” Ariana promises. “One day, Seraphim.”

-

“Ariana,” Seraphim asks. “Did I have a father? Like Heracles and Perseus.”

Ariana freezes again.  _ Bad question _ , Seraphim notes. “Yes,” she says softly, as if she’s prepared for this question more than others that Seraphim has asked. “He died in battle.” A moment. A pause. “He was a good man.”

“Oh.” Seraphim thinks about that for a moment. It’s not quite as glorious as he had hoped—after all, there was always the chance that Ariana didn’t know his father, that Seraphim was a demigod or something fantastic like that. But from what Ariana has said, from the stories she’s told, dying in battle is something glorious. “Alright.”

-

Years pass. Seraphim learns to hunt, with the help of Ariana and the bears. Ariana is no huntress, but she introduces to him the concept of  _ weapons _ . She does not quite know how to make a spear, but she knows the shape, and with trial and error she and Seraphim learn to make passable hunting weapons.

He refines his arrows, over the years, and Ariana compliments him on his skill with the bow and the craftsmanship of the arrows.

It’s all a great novelty to Seraphim, who has never known anything better. 

When he is eight years old, when the men come, when Seraphim sees someone dead, someone  _ killed _ for the first time, when he sees the man with the hand around Ariana’s throat to kill her next, he reaches for his arrows. He does not listen to her cry for him to run. He fires.

Seraphim has seen blood before, when he killed an animal or cut himself on a sharp rock. He soon learns that it is not the same when it’s streaming from open wounds and severed limbs.

The bears rush out to help. Seraphim is human, but he was raised by animals as much as by Ariana, and he knows that his job is to protect Ariana in a manner that will keep himself alive. With the bears as a distraction, he scrambles up a tree, and shoots another man. It takes two arrows to kill this one.

Seraphim has his arrows, and his spears, but the weapons of the men (who look exactly as Ariana described them, in the colors and the clothing of the people of the city) are far better. They are made by better hands with better tools. Seraphim knows his arrows are no match, but he is an animal; he is a weapon in and of himself. He lunges at the man with the unfamiliar blade at Ariana’s neck and—

She is dead. The blade is through his eye. The bears that are his brothers are dead. Everything is pain, pain, blood—

So many dead bodies. And suddenly, Seraphim feels, knows, that he is going to be next. 

A bear roars. Tears another man from the living realm. Seraphim rushes to Ariana. He sobs, and the tears sting and burn at what is left of his eye and mix with the blood on his face.

“ _ No _ ,” he cries. “ _ No! _ ”

  
  


-

Ariana is dead. Seraphim decides to seek out the cities that she’d told him of. 

Seraphim is no stranger to survival with the bare minimum. He is a stranger to survival on his own. The shores of Melidoni are not like the forest. The fish, at least, behave the same—but animals are harder to hunt and harder to retrieve from the water of the ocean than from the water of a stream. 

Seraphim is older, now. The words still come strained. He recognizes what he hears, but stringing the words together can be challenging. Processing the cacophony of voices in a crowd is difficult. The first time he enters a city, he wants to curl into a ball and cover his ears; retreat into himself, press his paws over his ears like the cubs he grew up with when they heard a loud noise. He wants to wait for the bear to come and roar and scare the threat away. He wants to feel safe again.

_ Freak _ , he is called in the city. People recoil from him in fear. He is beaten more than once, and he thinks, desperately, that things would have been better with Ariana there. She would have known how to blend in. How to coexist. Seraphim does not look like the people in the city. He goes to another. Things are the same. 

Seraphim  _ really _ learns of families, first, when he is out on his own. Piecing together his memories of childhood, he decides that Ariana must have been his mother; that in the broad sense of a family, the bear cubs were like siblings, or cousins. Of course, he knew those things from Ariana’s stories, but they were always different. Seraphim and Ariana lived outside of the city, didn’t wear city people clothes, didn’t eat city people food. It had made sense that they wouldn’t have a family in the way of city people.

He mourns Ariana. Mourns the bears. He has terrible nightmares, and when he’s tucked up into a tree or curled up on the flagstones of an alley, he thrashes in his sleep. In his dreams, Ariana dies. The bears die. Sometimes, he dies; more often, it is something worse. He is forced to watch. He tries to stop it, but nobody sees or hears him. In the especially awful dreams, he is the one to kill them—sometimes with the gleaming swords of the men, and sometimes with the spear that Ariana helped him to make.

Seraphim learns to steal. Food. Clothes. He dresses like a city person, now, but there is none of the color to his dark hood that there was to Ariana’s chiton. It is difficult to see, with one eye and a hood obscuring his vision, but it is better than the alternative, which are the whispers when people see his face. 

Words are still difficult, but Seraphim learns to use them better with more exposure. He learns the names of the men who ran into the city, covered in blood and talking of bears and dead women. He learns that they are the son of a man called Acrisius. He does not know who Acrisius is, does not know why he would do such a thing, but he knows that he is responsible for the death of Ariana. His caretaker. His family. His mother. He knows that Acrisius is a nobleman. He knows that he has to die.

It takes him years to track down the man who killed Ariana. Years of hiding in city streets, running, screaming, bleeding. Years of smelling like fish and his eye stinging from the salt water of the coast. Years of learning to use the daggers he steals.

He kills him, slowly, violently, and each slide of his knife into flesh is cathartic only in that Seraphim cannot find the actual word for it. He holds the man’s sword in his hand, the shining weapon that killed Ariana, and he  _ knows _ what he will do. 

He thrusts the sword through the man’s left eye, and runs for his life as the city guards rally behind him.  _ He’s come too far to die now. Not after Ariana had already died trying to save him _ .

The guards intend to chase him through the streets, but the walls of the city are no obstacle. Not to him. 

The chase culminates on a cliff—Seraphim looking out over dark waters as the guards close in behind him. Seraphim is from the forest, but the ocean has been his only companion these last years. If the choice is between men and nature? He will throw himself into the sea.

He is battered and bruised by the time he washes ashore, but he picks himself up and drags himself forward. His wounds sting from the salt water. Survival. That is his only thought. His only goal. 

He drags himself into a cave, and what he sees there sends a shiver of primal fear down his spine. It’s a corpse, but not like any corpse he’s ever seen before. (And he’s seen many.) What he sees before him is huge, and bloated, like some monstrous creature of eons long since past.

It must have been washed ashore, he thinks, under the delirium and the pain and the horror. Just like him. 

He has nowhere else to go. In another moment, he chooses survival yet again and throws himself down onto the corpse. It stinks like death and ocean rot, but Seraphim barely notices it over the  _ something  _ that wracks his body. 

There is a weapon, buried into the flesh of the thing. He needs it. He needs it. He drags himself over the flesh of the creature, closer, closer, and then—

Everything is wrong in his body. Everything is collapsing in on itself and exploding at the same time. He feels nauseous, like he might throw up his stomach and lungs, given the chance. He coughs up blood. 

_ Eat of my flesh and save yourself _ , comes a voice. It croons in Seraphim’s head, but in the midst of the chaos of his body, it sounds like screaming. Maybe he is the one screaming. He doesn’t know anymore, not through the failure of his body, not through the nausea, not through the panic, not through the pain pain pain  _ pain pain pain pain pain _ —

Seraphim, animal that he is, bends to tear at the flesh of the creature with his teeth. It tastes of salt and something he cannot name. The pain overcomes him. His vision fades. He collapses.

-

When Seraphim awakes, he feels different. Stronger. There’s a weight at his brow that wasn’t there before. The pain is a dull throb at the back of his consciousness. He becomes aware of the soldiers, then, and remembers in a flash. He needs the weapon. Needs the weapon.

Seraphim has no word for what he grabs, but it is sharp and strong and that is all that he requires. He lunges at the guards, kills without thinking—this is a matter of survival, and Seraphim has learned by rote that there is no room for mercy or remorse in survival. There is only kill or be killed. 

He is stronger than he was before. He does not have the time to think about this before he’s pinned down, and all of the panic resurfaces.

He needs the weapon, but it’s lying on the ground, through the chest of a soldier. He reaches for it, irrationally, hoping, pleading that he’ll be able to reach. He needs it. This is survival, and Seraphim cannot die here, he cannot, he needs to avenge Ariana, he’s  _ scared to die _ —

The weapon responds to his beckons. There’s a thrill through Seraphim’s heart as he realizes that it will fly to his command; it is not a thrill of victory, nor of hope, but of utility. Seraphim has another limb now. Another means of survival.

He kills and kills and kills and it matters not that he’s never used a weapon like this. It feels natural in his hand; it is an ease of fighting that he has never felt, an ease that he has missed since he’s been missing an eye.

The last three soldiers beg for their lives. Seraphim hates nobles. He has no intention of being one. Their fealty tastes bitter in his mouth.

-

It is strange, the metamorphosis his body undergoes. 

The horn is an obvious change. Seraphim spends a good hour, working off the daze of that initial battle, staring into the water and prodding at the new extrusion. Something in him screams that it is  _ wrong _ —something else says,  _ you are powerful, now. You are more than human. _

He looks nothing like the men dead on the stone ground of the cave; nothing like the men who killed Ariana. That, at least, is a comfort. 

The voice of what must be the creature, in his head, urges him softly to feed its flesh to the surviving soldiers. He does so. The men look disgusted, but they take it; men will do what they must, when it is between death and survival. Seraphim’s entire being is a testament to this. 

The men collapse, and wake again, and they look different. They do not hear the voice of the giant, but their skin takes on a grey-ish pallor, as does Seraphim’s, and there is a smaller horn than Seraphim’s protruding from one of their foreheads. They all test their strength, and find themselves stronger than before.

_ You are daemons _ , the dead creature whispers to him. Seraphim passes this on to the soldiers. The demons. His kind, now, he supposes. The thought is thrilling and horrifying all at the same time. 

“And what are you?” Seraphim asks aloud. 

_ A giant _ , is the creature’s response.  _ Your creator.  _

-

Seraphim learns the names of the soldiers. Well—Christos introduces himself. For all the terror of their little band, Christos seems somewhat in awe of the corpse of the giant. He crushes rocks in his hands and looks amazed every time. He looks at Seraphim, at the weapon in his hand, at the horn on his head, as if he’s something mystical.

“You don’t think it’s—magnificent?” Christos asks. Seraphim wonders if magnificent is one of the words that he never properly learned the meaning of. He wonders if Christos has ever been through something traumatic before—if the man’s means of coping are to find the wonder in the horror.

The other two do not speak to him. For all their pleading for mercy, they are clearly terrified, and they keep their distance from the abomination that is Seraphim. Christos identifies them as Laius and Niklaus. 

“Seraphim,” Seraphim introduces himself, and his voice is raspier than he remembers it. Deeper. He hasn’t spoken for a while. He wonders if the change in pitch is because of that, or if the giant’s influence has reached into his throat.

“We’ll never go home now,” Laius says, sounding distant and wrecked. 

Seraphim glares down at him from his perch against one of the great spines on the corpse of the giant. He has taken the high ground by instinct. Laius looks up at him, as if Seraphim has any more information than the rest of them, as if Seraphim had planned for this to happen. 

Seraphim scoffs. The sound feels as if it tears itself from his hoarse throat. “I suppose you won’t.” He tightens a hand around his weapon; the solid weight of it in his hand is comforting. 

“I have a family,” Laius says, looking brokenly into the water.

“You could bring them here,” Christos says, and that fervor creeps back into his voice. “They could be like us.”

Laius shudders at the thought. “Better that they think me dead.”

Niklaus considers Christos, silently. He catches Seraphim’s eye.

_ You need purpose _ , the giant’s voice echoes in Seraphim’s head. It catches him off-guard. He startles enough to draw the attention of the three demons.  _ Have you acclimated to your body, little demon? I have a mission for you. _

Create an army, the giant tells him. Bring back the giants. Overthrow the gods. Seraphim will have all the power he could want; could kill anyone who has wronged him, could live as well as he likes. 

Seraphim relays this, from atop the giant’s corpse. Laius shudders again, but there is a new set to his shoulders, something determined. Niklaus, quiet, looks up at him through hooded eyes, and Seraphim thinks that the man understands their situation more than the others. More than himself, even, maybe.

There is a red gleam to Christos’ eyes that was not there moments ago.

-

Niklaus’ wife joins them. After taking the armor and the weapons that they needed off of the corpses of the soldiers, Seraphim and the demons threw the bodies out to sea. Not finding the body of her husband, she went searching along the coastline. Her fear at the giant’s body and the disfigured men who stand in front of her, when she finds their cave, is quickly overcome by her relief at seeing Niklaus.

“You’re alive,” she breathes, and drops her bundle (food and water for her expedition, ostensibly) to run to him. Niklaus catches her up in his arms, which have taken on a distinctly gray-ish pallor by now, and she presses a hand to his cheek. 

Seraphim, who had been standing ready to send his weapon flying and kill the intruder, turns his head away. Their embrace, her care, is so… intimate, that it’s near painful to look at. 

Seraphim has not yet heard Niklaus speak, but he hears echoes of the man’s murmured tones as he, presumably, explains their situation to his wife. 

“A demon,” his wife echoes, and her tones are far clearer than those of her husband. “Oh, darling.”

It takes her less than an hour to decide that she will partake of the giant, as well. She introduces herself to Seraphim as Nympha. Niklaus cradles her in his arms when she collapses; kisses her forehead gently when she awakens, grayed and stronger. 

-

Their group changes together. Their skin grows grayer and grayer every day, and Seraphim sees in his reflection that the roots of his hair have begun to go white. It is the same for the others. 

Nympha is a bit behind the curve, but it quickly becomes clear that she is of the same breed as Christos; passionate, zealous. She loves Niklaus fiercely. Seraphim wonders what one does to deserve that. 

Seraphim does not know Niklaus well, not after three days of trauma and nightmarish changes, but the man seems more content with Nympha by his side. Christos is delighted to have a comrade in his enthusiasm. He is the one to tell her of their mission, when he sees her examining Niklaus’ horn. He seems hesitant to talk to another man’s wife, at first, but they quickly become fast friends.

  
It is with Laius that Nympha finds issue. The man is standoffish, and for all that he has accepted their new lot in life, he apparently cannot accept a woman in their ranks.

“It’s foolish,” he spits, glaring at Nympha, who stands at Niklaus’ side. “Fair enough for Niklaus to have his wife, if he is willing to subject her to such a fate. But she is  _ plotting _ , can you not see? She thinks she will lead the charge with Christos. She is a woman. It is not her place.”

Seraphim remembers the woman who raised him, the one who loved him and taught him to hunt and to survive, and sends his weapon arcing through the air to graze Laius’ cheek. “If she wishes to lead with Christos, she will,” he growls, because his voice can do that now. “Better for a competent, passionate woman to lead than for a thousand dispassionate soldiers to do the same.”

Laius bites back his next words.  _ Good _ , Seraphim thinks, because his patience with the man is beginning to run thin. 

Seraphim makes it clear that within their small ranks, women are equal to men. With that settled, Nympha decides that she will, in fact, lead. Christos gladly accepts her company, and helps Niklaus in teaching her how to use a sword.

Nympha begins to speak to Seraphim. Not in the same way as Christos, who always wants to  _ know _ things, wants to plan things, wants to theorize about the next changes that will happen to them. Nympha talks to him like… like… Seraphim is bad with words, but he would say that Nympha talks to him like a  _ person _ . 

“Your hair could be nice, you know,” she says, the first time she speaks to him of her own incentive. She reaches out to take a lock of his hair in her hand, and Seraphim freezes. “There are some split ends, but really, if you detangle it, you could look quite nice.”

Seraphim, grayed-out and horned, looks at her as if she’s gone mad. He thinks they might all be going mad, with the giant’s essence changing them the way it has. Christos definitely has, at least in some respects. Seraphim’s certain now that he hasn’t imagined the red gleam in the man’s eyes. 

“Would you like me to help you with it?” she asks. “I brought a comb with me.” She gestures toward their pile of supplies. While she still looked mostly human, she’d gone back to the polis to bring back as much food and clothing as she could, to provide for them until they could take the next step into the plans of the giant.

“I—” Seraphim looks at her for a moment, feeling supremely lost. “Alright.”

Nympha sits him down on a rock, and Seraphim shifts uncomfortably. He keeps a good grip on his weapon, the one he still has no name for. He hates having his back to people. He flinches, when she first tugs at his hair. She seems to think it was because she was too rough with the comb, and not because he hasn’t been—hasn’t been  _ touched _ , really, not in years, except for violence, because she apologizes and promises to be gentler.

That sends Seraphim’s mind  _ reeling. _

Ariana used to comb his hair, when he was small. It was a pointless venture, usually, because Seraphim’s hair would only get hopelessly tangled from the day’s adventures, and they’d have to start over again. Still, though… it was nice. A little ritual for the two of them, with Ariana’s handmade comb and Seraphim’s grumbling when she tugged too hard at a knot.

It’s not the same, with Nympha. Seraphim wouldn’t want it to be. He has no intention of associating the woman who could only have been his mother with Nympha. What it is, instead, is peaceful. Seraphim feels… cared for. Nympha’s hands brush against his neck and shoulders, occasionally, as she gathers his hair back into her hands again and again, and the warmth of her fingers is electrifying. 

Seraphim forgets, sometimes, that nobody’s touched him in so long. 

“We should cut this, at some point,” Nympha muses, behind him. Seraphim tenses at the sudden sound of her voice. He hadn’t realized that he’d relaxed, even that slightly. “Not all of it, don’t worry,” she says, misinterpreting his reactions once more. “Just the ends.”

Seraphim has no idea what to say to that, so he clears his throat and settles for an, “Alright.”

Nympha makes a satisfied noise behind him and goes back to coaxing the tangles out of his hair. She reaches his scalp, eventually, and Seraphim has to hold back a strangled sound at how overwhelming the feeling of fingers against his scalp is. 

“That’s strange,” Nympha says. “The roots—where it’s growing in white—it’s grown in much thicker. Healthier.” She pauses, as if she’s figured something out. She says nothing more. Seraphim says nothing in return.

A few more minutes pass before Nympha seems satisfied with the state of his hair. 

“I can braid it, if you’d like. Or tie it back. If we’re going to be fighting, it doesn’t make much sense to leave it loose,” she says, and Seraphim has to drag himself out of the haze of human contact (or what could have been human contact, once upon a time—neither of them are human any longer) to register that what she says makes sense. He agrees. She braids his hair back, and her fingertips skate across his back from time to time, and Seraphim wonders what he has done to suffer loneliness for so much of his life.

It’s strange, the weight of his hair against his back, braided back and tied with one of Nympha’s leather ties, but it’s good. It’s out of his face. He likes it. He pulls it over his shoulder to look at it, and looks at Nympha, and he says, softly, “Thank you.”

Nympha grins at him. Her teeth are pointier than he remembers. “You’ll find some way to repay me.”

-

They develop a plan, as the days pass. They should wait to make a move until they’ve finished  _ changing _ , Christos posits; but after that, they will go to the polis and call forth anyone that will come to be changed, to serve the wishes of the giant. 

Before, Seraphim would have been skeptical of this plan, at best. Knowing Christos, though; there must be  _ some _ who are radical enough to join on with a group of monsters.

Once they have a larger force, they will storm the polis. It cannot be an easy battle, Niklaus says, quiet and dark as ever. He offers two choices for the people of the polis—convert or die. 

Seraphim has no wish to kill. There is no other way, however; as Nympha points out, giving people the opportunity to run would only bring them back with reinforcements to crush their tiny movement. 

Ultimately, Seraphim is the first; he is the leader, the one with their fealty. The decision comes down to him. He has no wish to kill, but there is a fervor in Christos’ reddening eyes, a determination in the set of Niklaus’ shoulders and Nympha’s jaw. Even Laius, reticent as he is, seems resigned to it.

Seraphim has lived near the polis for years. He has only ever been spurned and abused by its people. Maybe, he thinks… maybe, if he is giving them the chance for survival, he can lead this charge.

“We need a name, don’t you think?” Nympha asks, later, sitting with Seraphim atop the corpse of the giant. She’s the only one who dares to sit with him. She’s the only one who Seraphim would allow to. “Our little army. Our little corps.”

Seraphim only looks over at her, eyebrow raised. 

“ _ Daemons _ is dramatic,” she muses, “but we’re not monsters. Just different.”

Those words are like a bucket of cold water over Seraphim. There is an ease to which she groups herself apart from  _ monsters _ . He’s never stopped to consider that he could be anything else. “Still… people,” Seraphim says, after a moment. 

“I like that,” Nympha says, considering. “Still people. The People of Melidoni.”

“That sounds nice,” he says, quietly.

Seraphim hates nobles, but perhaps, he thinks, he can be a general. 

-

“I could do that for you,” Seraphim says to Nympha, a couple of days after she does his hair. Niklaus, Christos, and Laius have gone out to find food. Seraphim thinks that he probably should have gone, since he certainly knows more about hunting than soldiers from the city, but they’re faster and stronger now, and they should be able to manage  _ something _ . Seraphim has stayed behind to guard the corpse of the giant. Nympha has stayed behind because of all of them, she certainly has the least experience with hunting.

“I have no intention to go and be made fun of by him,” she’d sniffed, meaning Laius, once the soldiers had left. “I’ll go with Niklaus, one of these days. In the meantime, I find you pleasant enough company.” 

Seraphim’s heart had fucking  _ glowed _ at that. He’d tried very hard not to blush.

Now, a few minutes later, Nympha is combing out her own hair. She’d mentioned repayment, and Seraphim… well, Seraphim wants to do something for her, so he offers to help.

Nympha looks somewhat surprised, but acquiesces. “Have you ever done this before?” she asks, handing over her comb.

“When I was younger,” Seraphim admits. “For—for my mother.”

“Oh,” Nympha says softly, and turns away to let Seraphim gather her hair in his hands.

He’s out of practice, to be sure. He’s clumsy with the comb, and pulls too hard, and Nympha laughs at him (which leaves his cheeks burning and has him extremely glad that she’s facing away), but she advises him nonetheless and he improves by the time her hair is free of tangles. 

Seraphim does not remember the technique of braiding. Ariana had tied her hair up, and whatever braids she had done had been too complicated for Seraphim’s little hands to replicate. Nympha shows him, and has him replicate the motions on his own hair. His braid looks sloppy, like the work of a child. Nympha laughs at him again, but she seems endeared. 

“So,” she says, once they’re finished with the impromptu lesson. “What shall we do, while we wait?”

Seraphim shrugs. He’s never had leisure time, before; never had time that was a commodity to spend, with another person. Not since Ariana, anyway. “We could fight. I don’t know how to use a sword, but—” the words slip from his mouth before he realizes it, but they’re already gone. He sighs. “It should be good practice for you to go up against this, right?” He holds up his weapon.

“Ah. Your fancy bident,” Nympha says, sounding amused.

“Is that what it’s called?” Seraphim barely breathes the words, looking at his weapon—his bident—and attempting to commit the word to memory.

There’s that look on her face, like she’s noticed something, but Nympha is already on her feet, collecting her sword. “Ready, Seraphim?” she asks, circling back around to stand in front of him. She holds out a hand, and Seraphim looks up at her for a moment, startled. Nobody has said his name in years. It clicks, then, and he takes her hand, and she hauls him bodily to his feet, bident and all. She laughs, all elation. “It’s  _ exhilarating _ to be able to do that,” she tells him, getting into the ready position that Niklaus favors. Seraphim follows suit.

-

Seraphim’s shoulders get broader. It’s painful. He wakes up screaming, one night, and as the rest of the demons wake and circle around him, he feels  _ something _ break free of the skin on his shoulder. There’s blood. He thinks his bones have shifted. 

The rest develop more protrusions; on their heads, on their shoulders, on their arms. Seraphim does, as well. Every moment of it hurts and feels  _ wrong.  _ His body is changing without his input, and it horrifies him. Seraphim hates not to have control, accustomed to it as he is. 

The others’ skin changes, hardening in some places until it is like stone. Christos delights in shattering a blade over his forearm. Nympha gently taps her arm against Niklaus’ shin, and laughs softly at the  _ tink _ sound it produces. Laius sits in the corner and runs the pads of his thumbs over the new rock that is his skin. Seraphim thinks the man grows quieter every day.

Seraphim does not notice the stone-skin, on his own body, but he feels more durable. As if his flesh will be harder to rend apart. He doesn’t know if it is worse to have skin like stone or to be the only one without, in this cave of shared horrors. 

The bones of his hands and feet shift, as well, until they are claws. Seraphim trembles, looking at his hands, gray and taloned. He might have cried, had he not been so consumed by the  _ awfulness _ of it all.

What Seraphim learns from a conversation overheard between Nympha and Christos are called  _ growing pains _ were similar to this, but nothing like it. At least then, his body was growing in natural directions.

Some nights, he cannot help but sob with the pain of it. The others do the same.

Christos’ eyes are the first to change. His eyes, a pale blue, darken dramatically into red, and the whites of his eyes go yellow before they go black. It’s unnerving. Christos reports blurry vision, and then reports being able to see in the dark, far better than before. 

Seraphim watches the whites of his eyes go yellow, one day, and dreads losing what vision he has. Christos’ experiences ring true for him, as well; his one-eyed depth perception is rendered even further fucked by the blurry vision.

That night, there’s an awful itching at his left eye. It feels swollen. Seraphim can feel that it is closed; even with his vision blurred, he can see in his watery reflection that there’s a strange glow on the left side of his face, that the milky white (or yellow, now) of his left eye is nowhere to be found.

The itching grows worse and worse until it is unbearable. It is  _ under _ the skin. Seraphim’s eye has not bothered him in years save for its uselessness, but now his entire being is consumed by the inhuman desire to  _ claw _ at it, to rip it out, to spare himself from the awful awful awful itching. It consumes him. He cannot—he cannot continue on like this, cannot live, not with the  _ itching _ —

With a  _ scream _ that is less human than any sound he’s ever made, Seraphim  _ tears _ at his eye with his claws, ripping open his old scar, rending flesh apart and cleaving through his useless, milky eye. The itching ceases, and he devolves into sobs, cradling his face as blood soaks through his fingers.

“Gods,” he hears, and he distantly registers it as Christos’ voice. “Seraphim, what have you done?”

He cannot answer. He only cries harder, and he can feel the tears mingling with the blood, stinging at his wound, and it was bad enough to have his face ripped open and his eye ruined  _ once _ . He cannot bear this second destruction, cannot bear it—

The itching is gone, and slowly, slowly, so is the pain. Less blood gushes through his fingers. Seraphim remembers the first destruction vividly, and knows it was nothing like this, nowhere near as fast. He feels  _ something  _ on the left side of his face, as if something’s being knitted together, and it’s—fuck. Seraphim’s words fail him at the worst times.

There are tentative hands on his shoulders (or, more accurately, one on his shoulder and one on his back, just behind the outcropping on his left shoulder), and when he blinks, finally, tearily, bloodily, he can see Nympha on one side of him, and Christos on the other. 

When he blinks, he can—oh,  _ fuck _ . He can  _ see _ . There’s vision in his eye. The useless one. The fresh air stings on the left side of his face, but Seraphim blinks again and again, and there is vision to the left of him that he hasn’t had in  _ years _ , and  _ oh _ , something feels strange and awful and wrong about this, but he can  _ see _ again.

He pulls himself away from Nympha and Christos and crawls blearily to the water. The blurriness is fading from his vision. He looks, and he  _ sees _ ; sees another eye, black and red, on the left side of his face. One to match the one on the right. It is different; slanted, awful, reptilian, but Seraphim’s whole  _ world _ is larger now. He chokes out a laugh, and for the first time in this wretched transformation, feels something like joy. 

-

Laius is the first of them to find that he can take human form again. 

As far as they can tell, their transformation is complete. Nothing has changed in a couple of days; no horrible new revelations have come to light concerning the nightmares their bodies have become. 

It’s Niklaus who notices first, when Laius changes.

“Laius,” he calls, drawing the attention of the others with his rare words. “You’re human.”

Sure enough, a quick glance over at Laius reveals to Seraphim that he is no longer demonic. The man in question opens his eyes, from where he seemed to have been concentrating, and examines his own hands with shock (and what looks like hope). 

“How did you do that?” Nympha crowds up next to Laius, taking one of his hands in her own to examine them herself.

“Don’t touch me, woman,” Laius snarls at her, snatching his hand back. 

Seraphim barely sees the curl to Nympha’s lip before she has cocked her leg back and kicked Laius’ arm, hard. There is a sickening crunching noise, and a howl of pain, and Seraphim’s eyes widen. He’s surprised, to say the least; it seems as if Laius is, too.

There is a moment of tense silence before anyone speaks. “I’ve had enough of your talking down to me,” Nympha spits, finally, turning with a whirl of her skirt to leave the cave. Probably for fresh air. She’s said that fresh air helps her calm down, before; she’s recommended it to Seraphim. Niklaus follows after her, catches up with her at the mouth of the cave. Seraphim sees him put a hand on her shoulder just before they move out of sight.

There is silence in the cavern, for a moment. 

Christos makes an inquisitive noise, from across the cave. “Laius, wasn’t your arm like rock, before?”

It’s a good question. Seraphim smells blood on the air. Laius’ forearm looks like it’s been snapped, from the kick. The man is still trembling, slightly.

“How did you do it?” Seraphim asks, quietly. He doesn’t need to be loud. Not now, when drips of water echo across the cavern like the footsteps of a giant. He will be heard.

“I wished,” Laius says, sounding dazed. “I closed my eyes, and I wished.”

Christos tries it. He opens his eyes a moment later to human hands, and Seraphim sees that familiar inquisitive look in his eyes. Christos looks over at Laius again, and pinches at his own arm. “We’re weaker this way,” he declares. “We lose all the benefits of it.” With that, he closes his eyes, and he’s demonic within a moment.

Seraphim envies Christos, much of the time. Him and Nympha. The ease with which they adapted to these new bodies; the ease with which they live in them.

Seraphim, from his perch atop the giant, closes his eyes. He concentrates. And he wishes. 

When he opens his eyes again, his hands are… the color of his skin. No longer gray. No longer clawed. They do not look the same. He realizes, instantly, that the vision in his left eye is gone. It sends a wave of panic through him. His skin feels flimsy, now.

Seraphim hates his demonic body. He hates it with all the fervor with which he’d hated his scar, the one that had left him half-blind. Now, though, he presses his eyes closed again and wishes, wishes frantically, and can only sigh in a desperate sort of relief when he opens them and sees the world with the depth of two eyes again.

-

They are a small army, but they still manage to take the polis on the coast of Melidoni. 

Christos says that he will go out to find recruits. A few days later, they have more people than Seraphim had been expecting—mostly young men, though he sees a few women in the crowd. Nympha is happy about that. 

Christos introduces him to the small crowd as Seraphim, their leader. It is strange, even now, to be addressed as such.

Days later, when the new recruits have been twisted into the same demonic shapes as Seraphim and his first demonic brethren, when they have been pulled into the same goal as Seraphim and the rest, Christos proposes their first attack. 

Seraphim doesn’t like the idea of killing innocent people, but he doesn’t say as much out loud. Nympha notices his unease. They are the only two atop the corpse of the giant, now; it is the only place of solace, now that the cavern echoes with the sounds of life, of gathering, not just the despair of a few cursed individuals.

“Don’t worry,” she says, and places a hand on his shoulder. It is still novel to be touched with such ease and familiarity. “We will win. And there is no need to kill, if they will surrender.” There’s that determined fire in her eyes again. She looks down, and catches her husband’s eye in the crowd—Seraphim sees Niklaus smile up at her, and something pangs in his heart. It is at once comforting and awful, that they can still love each other, even after all that has happened.

-

It is late, the night before their first attack, when Seraphim catches Laius attempting to sneak out. 

“What are you doing,” he says, planting his bident on the ground next to him. He cuts an imposing figure, now. Seraphim is learning to use intimidation to get what he wants. It is the best tactic, he finds, in a space full of people who fear him. 

“Nothing,” says Laius, too quickly. 

Seraphim has not been around people for long, but even he can spot such an awful lie. He narrows his eyes at Laius. It is still strange to feel the way that his left eye closes; the muscles are shifted, perpendicular to the right eye, and he’s acutely aware of it. 

Apparently, it is as unsettling to Laius as it is to him, because the man shifts uncomfortably and casts his gaze to the ground. “I—I was going to my family. To warn them. To get them out of the city.” He looks up, meeting Seraphim’s gaze. Seraphim is tall, especially so after becoming a demon, and Laius has to look up; but there’s a determination to his expression that Seraphim thinks he respects. “I don’t want this for them.”

That, Seraphim can understand. He has no family of his own—nobody to protect, not anymore—but he knows what he would do if it were Ariana, in place of Laius’ family. “Fine,” he says, and turns his head. In his peripheral vision—Seraphim’s blessed, novel, world-opening left-side peripheral vision—he catches surprise on the man’s face. “Go. Spare them. But—” his grip tightens on his bident. There are words, more eloquent ones, that he should say, but they fail him in the moment. “Don’t fuck this up.”

He sees the movement of a nod from Laius, and then the man is gone.

-

The end of the next day sees Seraphim drowned in blood. There are more demons, now. He does not look at their faces, does not judge them to be zealous like Nyphma and Christos or horrified like Laius. 

Laius had returned, the night before. He had fought with abandon. Christos had seemed approving of it. Seraphim thinks that his family must be off somewhere new, now—somewhere safe.

-

With that polis conquered, they move on.

Seraphim does not hear the voice of the giant anymore. He thinks that the voice, deep and terrible, might’ve been a dream, some nights. Still, though, his little army is dedicated to their cause. They fight for worship of the giant. The one who gave them strength.

There are only more cities in their path. They take one, then another, then another. Somehow, somewhere, Christos, Nympha, Niklaus, and Laius become his generals. They lead smaller forces, as his army ( _ his army _ , and isn’t that a novel, awful thought) grows large enough to be divided into smaller forces. Seraphim learns to give orders. Learns to lead. He does not think he likes leadership—but it suits him well enough, for now. 

It is good to have people who used to be guards on his side. Christos is an expert at getting their forces through the defenses of a city. Niklaus turns out to have a mind for strategy. Seraphim would be glad, if he were actually glad to be fighting for this cause.

They divide and conquer. There is blood. Always more blood. The taste of it is bitter in Seraphim’s mouth at night. The sight of it stings Seraphim’s red eyes, when he catches glimpses of his own reflection. 

Their goal, for now, is to take over the entire strip of land that borders the shores of Melidoni. Their homeland, Nympha calls it. It sounds almost romantic when she says it. Christos sets off on his own, leading his forces. Seraphim trusts his fervor to take him where he needs to go. Nympha and Niklaus go off as a pair, each ever at the other’s side. This leaves Seraphim and Laius together.

Their goal is almost complete. Seraphim and Laius, heading north, have reached the very top of what will be their territory. It is the last city, on this strip. Seraphim notices Laius acting strangely.

Seraphim does not like Laius. He knows this much. The man is flighty, and moody, and Seraphim is so flighty and moody himself that he cannot stand to have someone similar in such close quarters. Laius is awful to be around, even for the scope of the circumstances in which Seraphim has found himself. But Laius is… kindred, Nympha would call it, though Seraphim knows that she  _ hates _ Laius to a depth that has yet escaped him. They are borne of the same monster. 

That is why Seraphim does not want to believe that Laius is the reason for the failure of the final siege. 

It seems that the people are—prepared. More prepared than they should have been. Seraphim and his generals had been careful, as they moved across the coast. Niklaus had been clear. They could not let a messenger escape from a polis to warn the others. It would be disastrous, should their growing forces lose the element of surprise. 

They had been so confident that they’d kept word from spreading. But here is Seraphim, watching his forces forced to retreat (some left dead in the streets, speared through where their skin is not tough as stone), deathly certain that these people had been forewarned. And Laius has been acting too shiftily as of late for Seraphim to believe that the two aren’t connected. 

Laius proves difficult to get a hold of. He must hear, from the word spread around their camp, that Seraphim is looking for him, because suddenly he cannot find him. Finally, Seraphim enlists the help of two demons whose names he does not know to help him catch the slimy bastard. 

So it happens that Laius is caught between two demons, one holding each of his arms, while Seraphim faces him head-on, bident in hand. 

“What did you do,” Seraphim asks, tone flat. There is no room for nuance here.

Several conflicted expressions run across Laius’ face before the man finally answers. “I went to find my family,” he spits. “This is where they’d run to hide.”

“And your family told the authorities we were coming?”

Laius’ expression changes several times, again, until it settles on something determined. The man looks up at Seraphim, and Seraphim thinks that what he sees on his face is pure disgust. Nobody has looked at him like that in a while. It makes him feel  _ angry _ . “They had nowhere else to run, did they?  _ I _ told the authorities. To save my family. And I’d do it again.”

“You betrayed us,” Seraphim says, trying to process all of the information alongside his anger at being looked at like that again. He’d thought he’d escaped the scornful looks of the people on the street; the looks he’d gotten as an emaciated, dirty teenager. He’d thought he’d gotten away from the disgusted looks that people reserved for the mauled freak that begged on the side of the road.

“Of course you wouldn’t understand,” Laius hisses at him. “You’ve never had a family, have you,  _ freak _ ? All you know is killing, and look at all the people you’ve brought down with you. You’ve gotten me, but you won’t have my family.”

Seraphim has not been a leader, a commander, for very long. He has never had to deal with insubordination before, much less real betrayal. If he’d had any plans to spare Laius, though, they went out the window with the man’s words. Seraphim sees red. He spins his bident elegantly in his hand before he slams it into Laius’ chest. 

“Traitors will be condemned,” he announces to the two demons holding the now-corpse. They look shocked, if not scared. “Be sure to spread the word.”

Seraphim does not bury Laius, kindred as he may have been. He drags his body to the shore, and throws it to the sea, so that the waves might do with it what they will. He watches the corpse float father and farther out with hard eyes. 

They take the city, a week later. Seraphim does not know which of the bodies in the street are Laius’ family. It makes him sick to think of. 

-

Seraphim had not liked Laius. It is different, with the rest of his original demon brethren. Perhaps he doesn’t  _ like _ Christos, but the man is loyal and passionate, and he’d done his job (even in places where Seraphim himself thinks he would have faltered). Niklaus is a good soldier, and if Seraphim does not like him, he thinks he respects him.

Nympha… is his friend. His first real friend. The one he would be most scared to lose.

He had not liked Laius, but he does not want to lose the rest of his generals, and he is  _ scared _ , more than he’d like to admit, to tell them that he’s killed one of their own. But, still, they have reconvened to discuss their next steps, and Seraphim has to explain why there is one missing from their number in their conference tent. 

“He’s dead,” Seraphim tells his generals, gaze cast downwards. “Laius.” His claws dig just slightly into the wooden table they stand around. “He told someone that we were coming. Sabotaged us. So I killed him.” He doesn’t look up—can’t look up. They know that he’s killed one of their own. These people, who have been with him so long… what if they hate him for it? Think him a monster for it?

“Good,” he hears, and looks up to see Nympha, chin up and expression defiant. “I’d’ve done it myself, had I been in your place. I have no tears to shed for that arrogant traitor.”

Niklaus nods, stoic as ever, at her side.

“You made the right choice, Seraphim,” Christos says, and there is the gleam to his eyes again. “Commander.”

That is when Seraphim decides. Decides to truly dedicate himself to his cause. He is too deep in the blood to back out—and in worship of the giant lies friendship with Nympha, lies some strange camaraderie with Christos and Niklaus, lies sight for his left eye, lies strength that he lacked when he was human and always at the feet of a stronger man. He is strong, now. Capable.

The gods have never done anything to help Seraphim. Not when Ariana was killed, when he lost sight in his left eye. Not when he was living alone on the coast, surviving off of washed-up, half-rotten fish and whatever he could scrounge from the outskirts of the polis. The gods did nothing to prevent him from turning into the monstrosity that he has become. Seraphim thinks that he does not mind leading a crusade against them. 

In the meantime; Christos asks what their next step will be, and Seraphim asks if any of them have heard of a man named Acrisius.

-

Weeks later, Seraphim and Nympha sit by a fire. Christos is miles off, conquering some city. Niklaus is off in his and Nympha’s tent.

When Seraphim asks why Niklaus has chosen to go off on his own, Nympha simply shrugs with a smile.

“He doesn’t like conversation, much. You know that,” she says, and there’s that chiding, teasing tone to her voice. “Besides, he knows that you and I don’t get to talk much. He and I spend enough time together. He loves me enough to afford me my space.”   
  
Seraphim notes that down. Love, he’d thought, had been taking as much time as you could to be with another person. Maybe it’s more. “I see,” he says, simply, because he never knows what to say in situations like this. 

Nympha hums, looking him over. “How is your hair?”

Seraphim pulls his braid over his shoulder, into the firelight, both for him to examine and for Nympha to see. More of it is white. He doesn’t know how, but the color has crept down his hair, bleaching it like his skin had been greyed out. “Better,” he says. “Nicer.”

“It looks healthier,” Nympha tells him. “Much better than it was at first.” She pauses, for a moment; Seraphim thinks he knows her well enough to identify her pause as a question that she is hesitant to ask. “Seraphim… what happened to you? Before all of this?”

Seraphim looks down at his clawed hands, and up at Nympha’s greyed, horned face, and decides that maybe telling her wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world. “I lost my mother,” he says, clearing his throat. His voice is always deeper than he expects it to be, even now. “I was on my own, for a long time. Acrisius… his sons are the ones who killed her.”

“Ah,” is all Nympha says. Simple understanding. Seraphim thinks… it’s nice. 

“What did… you do? Before this,” he asks, and he feels stupid for doing so. It’s an awkward, clumsy question. It would have been better asked in the silence of the cavern, probably, but those days are behind them, now. 

Nympha hums, looking contemplatively into the fire. “Nothing so exciting as this. My mother was a weaver. My father worked with hides. I learned the family trade. Fell in love with a handsome soldier.” She casts a fond glance over at her tent. “My father already had someone picked out, but Niklaus had a sword. They could hardly tell us  _ no _ .” She laughs, softly; the sound is gravelly. Seraphim wonders if her laugh had always sounded like that. 

Niklaus would know. He and Nympha have the benefit of knowing each other, human and inhuman alike. 

“Love,” he repeats, casting his gaze into the fire. “That must have been… nice.”

“It’s very nice,” Nympha agrees. “It’s a large part of why I decided to stay with the four of you, that day. The body… wasn’t ideal, of course, but I’d promised to live my life by his side, and I hardly wanted to do anything else.” She grins at him, and the expression is all but wicked in its delight. “The promise of world domination wasn’t too awful, either.”

Seraphim cannot conjure up a grin for her, in return. He finds no joy in the husks of cities that they leave behind, the mass graves of those who would not convert. Seraphim finds no joy in being a killer. He’s not sure Nympha does, either—or Christos, for that matter—but there’s something about power that delights her. He can understand liking the strength. He’s found two of Acrisius’ sons in total, now, and with both of them dead, there’s a control about his life that he hadn’t felt before. He manages a twisted smile for her. It’s a strange expression, but she accepts it warmly, all the same.

“You’re loved, too, you know,” she says, and the teasing smile is back. “I think Christos still sees you as some kind of god, and Niklaus is a bit too reserved to admit that he cares for your wellbeing, but I love you, my friend.”

Seraphim can barely stop himself from stuttering. He is silently grateful that his gray skin does not betray a flush as it used to. He hadn’t known that you could love someone like that. As a friend. He takes the information in stride, and manages to get out, “I love you, as well.”

Nympha smiles at him, looking as if she’s considering him.

“Oh,” Seraphim says, attempting to change the subject and hoping that the red streaks across the tops of his now-pointed ears will keep the tips of his ears from looking red. “I have something for you. Wait a moment.” He stands and slips into his own tent.

Nympha is looking up at the stars, when Seraphim returns, a small package in his hand. His movement catches her attention, and she looks up at him, questioning, when he hands her the package.

“It’s food. Dessert?” Seraphim doesn’t know exactly what to call it. He sits down again. “Sesame and honey.”

“Ah,” Nympha says, opening the little package and taking a bite of the treat. “Where’d you get this?”

Seraphim leans back, bracing his arms behind him. “Someone gave it to me. Must’ve thought I’d like it. Probably trying to gain my favor.”

“Did they succeed?” Nympha asks, looking amused. The fire crackles, and her sharp features (sharper now than they once were, Seraphim is sure, though he can hardly remember her looking like anything but this) cast shadows across her face. 

“Not particularly.” Seraphim still isn’t used to people… sucking up to him. Wanting his approval. It’s an unsettling change from everything he’s known. He wouldn’t have felt comfortable, eating the candy. Accepting the tribute. It’s bad enough that Christos looks up to him the way that he does; getting gifts is another thing altogether.

He would’ve welcomed it, maybe, at some other part of his life. Maybe not. Seraphim does not remember a time when he knew society and did not despise it for rejecting him.

“Don’t you like sweets?” Nympha asks, later, on the last bite of her sesame and honey treat. She speaks with her mouth full. Seraphim wrinkles his nose at her, though his manners aren’t any better, after years in the forest. The manners that Ariana had attempted to impress upon him have long since been forfeited for the sake of survival. Nympha sticks out her tongue, covered in bits of sweet, at him, and Seraphim pretends to gag. 

It’s playful. Seraphim would never have imagined himself being playful. Not after everything. 

“Not now, I don’t,” he says, pulling his face into a veneer of over-exaggerated disgust. It’s hard to hide the smile tugging at his lips. “I don’t think I ever want to eat anything ever again.”

Nympha rolls her eyes, the smile clear on her face. “So dramatic.” 

Seraphim, feeling unexpectedly light, laughs. He continues with an actual response, for Nympha’s sake. “I like them. But—I never really got used to them, I suppose. The taste can be a little—” he pauses. He’s lost the words again. “A little much.”

Nympha is better at those things. Liking sweet things. Smiling. Being in love. Appreciating the stars. She knows what it is to be human more than Seraphim ever will. 

There’s a knowing look in Nympha’s eyes, and Seraphim thinks, not for the first time, that she’s picked up something from his comments that he hadn’t really meant to reveal. It doesn’t matter. At this point, there’s nothing that Nympha doesn’t already know about him that he would mind her finding out. Either way, as she always does, she continues on with a light-hearted response. 

“It’s certainly no problem for me,” she says, going in for another bite of the sweet. “I’m happy to eat your rejected offerings.” 

She shoots him a grin, and Seraphim thinks it’s the kind of expression that might always have been meant for pointed teeth. 


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> they never fucking??? tell us where seraphim gets the manticore from??? so i made it up. if they tell us more next season and it turns out i was wrong, no i wasn't. it's my canon now. 
> 
> anyway welcome to the second hurt of the hurt/comfort/hurt again. i'm so sorry but also no i'm not

With Laius gone, Seraphim pairs off with Christos. It would be silly to do it any other way—Niklaus and Nympha lead well together, and they’d be hard-pressed to separate, and Christos was already working on his own. Seraphim may have preferred to lead his cause with the couple, but Christos isn’t a bad choice. Seraphim still trusts him.

It’s good for the two of them, in that they talk more often than usual. It leads into conversations about subjects other than battle (Christos’ favored topic), and Seraphim finds that while his conversations with Nympha will always hold his favor, talking with Christos isn’t a bad alternative.

“Did you ever learn about the stars, Seraphim?” Christos asks, one night, face tilted up to the stars. There are no fires in their camp. They are set up just out of sight of a polis, their next conquest, and it’s imperative that they do not betray their location. Their camp is dark; and so the stars are ever brighter.

It’s comforting, almost. Seraphim has lived near his whole life under the stars. They’re like a home, now.

Christos likes the stars, apparently. The moon is their best light source at the moment, thus why Christos is sitting cross-legged on the grass to sharpen his sword. Seraphim does not need to sharpen his bident. He doesn’t actually think it can dull, but companionship… it’s still a novel commodity, and he thinks it’s worth sitting out on the grass to enjoy the company that he’s been so long deprived of. 

“I’ve heard a few stories,” says Seraphim, which is true. Ariana hadn’t been a storyteller, but there are only so many things you can say to a child. She’d pointed out a few constellations; told him the story of Orion, and the scorpion, and showed him their shapes in the stars. Thinking on it now, Seraphim thinks the story is rather poignant. Even when you’re on the good side of a god, you can still be punished for it. 

“There’s so many heroes, up there,” Christos says, laying his sword in his lap. A moment later, he’s leaning back until he’s lying in the grass, still looking at the stars. After a tentative moment, Seraphim follows suit. “Do you ever think that we’ll be up there? One day?”

The real answer is  _ no _ ; the stars are for heroes, and Seraphim has never considered himself anything close to a hero. What he says instead is, “Wouldn’t the gods have to favor us, to put us in the stars?”

Christos breathes out. His breath fogs in the chill night air. “We don’t need the favor of the gods, Seraphim. When we destroy the gods, when we bring back the giants—we’ll have the power to put  _ ourselves _ in the stars.”

It’s a nice fantasy. Seraphim thinks he understands more about Christos, now. “Hm,” he says, not to respond. Just to acknowledge. 

-

Months later, their crusade has taken over the whole coast, and is spreading outward.

Seraphim believes in the cause of the giant. It hadn’t lied, after all. He is stronger now. He has survived. He has found camaraderie with others—he is still rejected by humanity, but he is no longer less than human. He is more. And there are others like him. 

He carries the cause close to his heart (because the cause is Nympha, and Niklaus and Christos, and acceptance from a precious few that he has never had before), but he takes up a side project, of sorts. Seraphim has  _ resources _ now, and it’s strange; his people know things, his people will assist him in whatever he asks. When he seeks out the sons of Acrisius, it’s almost easy.

Seraphim learns a lot about nobility, conquering the continent. It disgusts him. He would pay them no attention, but any noble could know the location of the ones he is hunting. So Seraphim watches them. What he sees is cowardice, avarice; he notices that while the common people die in their homes, in the streets, the nobles retreat to grand structures. He notices that the city guards forsake the peasants to protect the rich. Some ugly, twisted thing starts to grow in his heart. He may be the cause of the suffering of these people, but it seems despicable that a human would leave one of their kind to die. 

He is leading the forces that are killing the peasants, but he offers them an escape; they can survive, if they have the will to. This is how he rationalizes it. It is how he  _ has _ to rationalize it.

  
In those months, when Seraphim is still a necessary player on the battlefield, he takes charge of the forces that attack castles and the like. His bident and his combat experience (an idea that is still foreign—but he supposes that he is a soldier, now) are essential for getting through the rows of guards, for getting through to the well-guarded nobility and their well-guarded resources. At first, he offers the nobles the same choices as the rest of the people. Convert or die. One of the braver nobles, in one attack, spits at him. Seraphim finds that the feeling of his bident driving through the man’s chest, spearing through flesh and crushing bones and organs, sparks a sort of satisfaction. 

Seraphim’s hatred of Acrisius and his damned sons grows. Expands. The idea of a noble has his lip curling in disgust; he decides that he wants none of them in his army. They are, as Nympha still calls them, the People of Melidoni—and no noble he has ever met would make any sacrifices for the common people. 

-

It’s in the house of a noble that Seraphim finds the creature.

He is searching the basement, looking for gold stores, food stores, things that could be helpful to their cause. He’s just found a pantry when he hears a growl.

A few meters away, behind a set of metal bars, is a creature, the likes of which Seraphim has never seen before. It’s got the head of a lion, the body of a dragon, and feathered wings. It has horns like Seraphim’s own. It roars at Seraphim, and he goes tense.

Everything in his body screams  _ danger _ , but Seraphim is stronger now. The creature is behind bars. He has nothing to fear, not with his weapon in his hand. He takes a step closer.

The creatures yowls at him. The sound is like nothing he’s ever heard. He tries to reason out why it would be here, in the basement of nobility. The only answer he can think of is that the owner of the house had caught it; kept it as an oddity.

As he draws closer, the thing draws back. It looks scared. Seraphim’s heart twinges for it. He’d grown up with animals; he can read them better than most. This creature—a manticore, he thinks, but he’s not good with words, he has nothing else to call it—is not like the bears, but Seraphim has been the cornered animal more times than he could recount. He knows what it is so be hungry and afraid. As the creature backs away, he can see its ribs to the sides of its scaly belly. 

He retrieves food from the pantry. Meat, mostly; things that would go bad, if he were to try and take them back to his people. He puts these things next to the bars, and backs away. The creature comes closer, tentatively, and rips a bite out of the first cut of meat.

Seraphim thinks that this thing is like himself. In some way, at least. The manticore seems to recognize this kindred connection, as well; a few minutes later, with food in its belly and a clear understanding that Seraphim will not hurt it (and with the bident stashed safely in the pantry), it eats out of his hand.

Seraphim unlocks the cage, and the manticore slowly creeps from its confinement, soft on padded feet. It sniffs him. He offers it another piece of meat. 

Seraphim leads the manticore outside, thinking it will fly free, its freedom restored. Instead, it merely looks at him. Seraphim laughs under his breath, and feeds it another piece of meat. The creature looks… content, if not happy. 

It’s nice to think that Seraphim can do something good for something. Comforting. 

The manticore follows Seraphim back to camp, and within a week, allows him to ride it. He lets out a  _ whoop _ , the first time he soars through the air on the manticore’s back. It feels like freedom. The manticore roars in response, and it feels like companionship. 

-

By the time Seraphim is supposed to meet with his generals, he and the manticore seem to have come to a mutual understanding. He feels a bit self-satisfied, swooping down from the sky to land at their meeting place.

Christos is, predictably, impressed. He looks at Seraphim with an awe in his red eyes; Seraphim notes it as ‘hero worship’, a term attributed to the man by Nympha. 

“Is it… friendly?” Niklaus asks, when Seraphim jumps off of the manticore. 

Seraphim is surprised at the question, and glances back at the creature. It meets his eyes with a questioning look of its own and a low rumble. Seraphim looks back to Niklaus with a raised eyebrow, and shrugs his shoulders. “I suppose.”

Niklaus nods, steadily, and takes a step toward the manticore. He holds out a hand, to the creature, and when it sniffs it, reaches tentatively toward its ears. The manticore backs away, nervous as much as angry, and Niklaus takes his hand back, and then holds it out once again. It’s curious. Like a dance.

Seraphim looks quizzically to Nympha, the leading expert on her husband’s behavior. There’s a smile on her face. She shrugs. “He likes cats,” she says, as if that’s any sort of explanation.

“Where did you find it?” Christos asks, looking between Seraphim and the manticore as if he can’t decide which is more worthy of his attention.

“Basement,” Seraphim says. “In a cage. Some noble must have found it interesting.” The thought still riles him. He adds the imprisoning of innocent creatures to the crimes of the nobility. “It looked hungry, so I fed it, and set it free, and it… followed me.” 

For his part, it seems that Niklaus has reached the same solution as Seraphim. He’s produced a bit of dried meat from a pocket, and he offers it to the manticore. After taking it gently in its teeth, the creature seems to reconsider him. Gingerly, Niklaus reaches out to pet its ears, and the manticore allows him. “It’s sweet,” he puts in. There’s a rare smile on the man’s face. 

The manticore seems to like petting. Seraphim had intended to talk over battle strategy, maybe rework plans to include the assistance of the creature, but neither the manticore nor Niklaus look very interested in moving, and Christos is edging ever-closer to the two of them. Seraphim sighs, and turns to Nympha, who laughs at his disappointment.

“It figures you’d find a fucking  _ manticore _ ,” she says, grinning at him. “Ever the extraordinary one, aren’t you?”

There are other people present, so Seraphim tries not to blush at her compliment. Even so, he hopes that the gray pallor of his face will be enough to cover any color that might be forthcoming. 

A conversation’s time later, Seraphim and Nympha stand side by side, watching Niklaus, Christos, and the manticore. Christos has worked his way up to carefully petting the creature. Niklaus, by now, has gotten his whole hand into its mane. They make a funny picture; Niklaus sitting cross-legged with the manticore nosing against his face, and Christos standing next to them, running his hand over the creature’s ears. 

“Have you named it?” Nympha asks. She’s still looking fondly at her husband.

“Named it?” Seraphim asks, and then shakes his head. “No.” It hadn’t occurred to him. 

  
“You should.” Nympha’s attention shifts from Niklaus to Seraphim. There’s a playful smile on her face. “I think the two of them might be upset if they had nothing to call it.”

Seraphim laughs at that. The sound catches the attention of the men and the manticore—Seraphim realizes belatedly that he doesn’t laugh around the others. He clears his throat. “I’ll give it some kind of name.”

Later, Seraphim wonders if the manticore is like them. If it was once a creature that found a giant and became something more. It does not look exactly as a manticore should (at least, according to Christos). It’s more dragon than scorpion, and the wings aren’t a common factor of manticores, apparently. Still, Seraphim decides to call it Orion. If manticores are traditionally part scorpion, it’s a funny bit of irony. Seraphim doesn’t often get to make jokes. He quietly revels in it.

-

The renown of Seraphim’s army grows. The world knows of them, now—the demons. The People of Melidoni. Seraphim has resources, but he does not know much of human society where the demons have not already taken over. When the humans create a force to counter them, it comes as a surprise. 

Seraphim, flying overhead, is the first to see the army. Night’s shroud of darkness has always worked to their advantage, hiding their army, but it is useful to the humans, as well. It has him pausing in mid-air. There is a  _ force _ , here to greet them—men, armed soldiers, not just city guards. That can’t be good. The only time Seraphim has ever led an attack against a polis that was prepared, they were forced to retreat. This polis is only more equipped. 

He means to fly down, warn his people, tell them to fall back until they can formulate a better plan, but there is Christos. Leading the charge. The man looks so small, beneath Seraphim and Orion; the small horned figure holds his sword aloft, and the demons behind him cheer. 

In a moment of desperation, Seraphim dives down. He is still far above the army, behind Christos himself, but he can get there. He can reach him. There is still time for the crisis to be averted, still space between Christos and the city gates. 

Then the gates of the polis open, and the humans come rushing out. 

Christos is mounted. He carries a sword. His skin is like stone, on his arms, on his legs. It matters not when the first well-trained rider comes rushing out, broadsword in hand. 

Air rushes past Seraphim’s face, and he feels his braid come undone. He can’t bring himself to care about the loose hair streaming beside him when he sees the blade go through Christos’ neck.

Their forces are quickly overwhelmed. Seraphim is lower, now, and he swoops over his army, calling them back, giving the order for retreat. They still lose too many people. The land in front of the polis gates is strewn with demon bodies. 

Seraphim will go back, later. Under cover of night once more. He will seek out Christos’ body, trampled and broken. He will hold the man’s body in his arms, cradle it safely, carry it back to the hills of their camp. 

He will order his forces into a full retreat, and make the journey back to where it all began. He will bury Christos on the coast of Melidoni—close to the giant he so revered, and under the stars. 

And despite the promises that he makes to himself, Seraphim will weep. 

-

It’s not just the humans of the one polis that have mustered up a counter-force. It’s a full push back against Seraphim’s power. He calls for a meeting of his generals—the two that are left—to discuss.

He will tell them of Christos’ demise in person. Better to bear the news that way. Better that they hear it from him than someone else.

Delivering the news of Laius’ death was not like delivering that of Christos’. Laius was a loss, only in that he was the same as them. Christos is a loss in that he was kindred. He was not close to any of them in the way that Niklaus or Seraphim are close to Nympha, but Seraphim counted him as… a friend. Someone trusted. 

He dismounts from the manticore, on the field where they are supposed to meet. A solitary figure awaits him. He meets Nympha’s eyes.

Seraphim has never been very good at reading the expressions of others. He’d only had time to practice with one person, after all, and it hadn’t been for very long. He recognizes what is in Nympha’s eyes, though, because he is sure that it’s in his own. 

It’s grief. Loss.

Seraphim and Nympha realize what it means, that the other has come alone, at the same time. 

Seraphim does not like to display weakness. This time, though, alone on the field, he falls into Nympha’s arms as she falls into his. They sink to the ground. They cry.

-

Seraphim has had enough of loss. 

Niklaus had died protecting Nympha, she tells him. Jumped in front of a sword for her. If Seraphim were someone else, he might have thought it romantic. Seraphim was not raised to romanticize violence. The story sits bitter on his tongue.

He relays the story of Christos’ doom. He does not relay the guilt he felt at not  _ being _ there, not warning him in time, not fighting alongside him, until the very end. 

“It’s fitting,” Nympha, who ran away with the love of her life, who was raised on stories and romantic notions, says. Later. She sounds numb. “That his enthusiasm should be the thing to kill him.”

Seraphim has had enough of people dying for his sake. He has had enough of people dying right in front of him, just out of reach. He is  _ certain _ that he could have saved Christos, had he been closer. That he could have warned Nympha, spared Niklaus, had he been on the battlefield with them.

“We’ll have to be more cautious,” says Seraphim, as the sun begins to set. His tears have dried in tracts down the dust on his face. “We’ll stick closer to—to the homeland. Ensure that we keep what we have. We’ll fight battles that we know we can win.”

Nympha nods. She still looks numb, gaze focused on something in the middle distance. There are still fresh tears running down her cheeks; slow, sluggish, like a lazy river. “We can’t split up. Not anymore.”

“No,” Seraphim agrees. The sunset is beautiful. He finds it repulsive in his grief. “Not anymore.”

-

It is different, leading his army with Nympha. There is no more easy conversation. No more light laughter. Seraphim has grieved before, but not like this. Not with somebody else. 

He knows that Nympha is having a harder go of it than him. He cared for Niklaus, cared for Christos, but he did not love either of them. Not like Nympha loved Niklaus. Seraphim offers her what he can—his hand, to hold when she needs comfort, his lap when she needs somewhere to rest. He would offer his shoulder to cry on, but his shoulders are spiked; they are sharp, hostile things, and they would offer no comfort. 

Once or twice, he closes his eyes, and concentrates, and takes human form. Nympha does the same. She lays her head on his shoulder, free of spikes, her own head free of horns, and they sit like that. Seraphim keeps his eyes closed as much as he can. 

The humans, with their newly organized forces, start to push back. To take back the cities that were once theirs. Seraphim is glad that he chose to consolidate his forces. He will have to be smarter, now; he’s lost the momentum of his initial wave, and now he will have to be strategic in what he tries to take. 

It is harder, with only two people to lead. Nympha, for all her grief, is still a good strategist; she controls the use of the resources they’ve gathered. She is the one who suggests moving the corpse of the giant, and building a base of operations around it there.

They no longer move like a conquering army. They hold tight to what they have, their coast, and any expeditions are small forces. They send out demons in the guise of humans to case the cities, to see whether things are worth taking, to see what has to be done to defeat the military force present. They make progress. Slowly.

In the meantime, they strengthen themselves. Create a navy. They have the coast, and so they will use it. 

The humans, eventually, discover that demons can take human form, but there is no way for them to tell them apart. As long as the demons are good spies, the strategy is foolproof. Demons can disappear into crowds as easily as demolishing them. Seraphim does not like to go out on missions like that—his human form makes him weak, vulnerable. Nympha insists on going. She likes to know things for herself. It is the only time Seraphim can make some kind of peace with leaving her side.

Seraphim can do nothing but hold tightly to his cause. The humans have rebuked him. Killed his friends. He will bring back the giants, and he will kill the gods, and he will do it so that he might live in a world where he and Nympha can be strong, can be safe. 

-

Nympha is out on a mission, exploring a polis in human form, when the humans figure out how to identify a disguised demon. A way to kill a demon easily. It’s fire, harried messengers report; a demon lit on fire will burn away to nothing in a bout of purple flames, and Nympha has perished in a pillar of amethyst. 

Seraphim is left to scream out his grief once more. 

-

Losing Nympha is not like losing Ariana. Ariana was a mother; Nympha was a friend. Someone who showed him kindness when they were not obligated to.

Nympha knew what it was like to feel, to breathe, to love. She was Seraphim’s friend. His first friend. His closest friend. Losing her is not like losing a mother. Losing Ariana was like losing a piece of his world. Losing Nympha is like losing a part of himself. 

He might have mourned with Niklaus, in some other time—some other place. Both of them were reticent to talk, reticent to mourn, but they might have made an exception, for Nympha’s sake. She would have wanted them to have each other.

Niklaus is dead, though. As is Christos. Seraphim is alone. 

-

Seraphim is a different leader, alone. Stricter. More violent. Seraphim has lost everything, friends, family, and now all he has is this ceaseless war.

He throws a thick blanket over his shoulders, at night, so that the spikes will not cause undue damage, and sleeps tucked up against the manticore. It’s the one warmth he will afford himself. 

His army keeps  moving forward. Seraphim appoints leaders of squads, but no more generals. He is the highest level of command, as always, but there is nobody that he trusts to lead so close under him. He keeps the corpse of the giant safe, he keeps hold of the land that he fought so hard for, that Nympha and Niklaus and Christos died for, and he razes whatever stands in his path. They find more strange creatures, like the manticore, along the way; Seraphim finds that most hungry things can be brought over to one’s side, if you feed them.

He wonders if all of these creatures had found a giant corpse, somehow. The gray pallor of the three-headed dog certainly seems to signify something of the kind. 

He knows only frustration with the demons and boundless anger toward the humans, now. Standard protocol is still to provide the choice: convert or die. Seraphim asks the question less often than he used to. His bident sheds more blood. 

He knows, somewhere deep in him, that the ceaseless killing will offer him no solace in the end, but Seraphim has known no solace since the death of his mother. When his frustration takes shape in the form of a hole through the chest of an innocent person, there’s a sense of catharsis—and Seraphim chases that fleeting feeling through the human populace, leaving the corpses of cities and ruins of people in his wake.

He stops braiding his hair. It reminds him too much of Nympha. He ties it over his shoulder, instead.

-

He dreams of her, some nights. Nympha. They are always nightmares. Any happy moments that his mind recalls end in the knowledge that she is dead.

Seraphim did not watch her die. Not with his own eyes. Now, he watches her death again and again in his dreams. She is on Christos’ horse, one night, and Seraphim is too slow to save her. Sometimes she falls into the sea. Seraphim only dreams once of her  _ burning _ , and it feels awful. Wrong. It is such a pathetic death, for someone so passionate, for someone who loved so much.

He doesn’t scream, when he wakes from these dreams. Not like when he was a child, when dreams would end with a sword cleaving through his eye. No, these dreams he wakes from in tears. His face is hot with them most nights.

Seraphim has a job to do. An army to lead. A mission to fulfill. It is only those nights, in the dark of his tent, that he allows himself to cry—to grieve.

-

Somehow, the idiot demons have lost a map of the cave system where they hide the giant. To an Amazonian soldier, is what they tell him. Fuck. He’s heard of this Amazon before; she’s the Grand Archon of the human army, a woman named Alexia.

He sends out another group to retrieve it—from what he hears, the group of soldiers who took the map is small, and should be easily overwhelmed. A messenger reports back that while most of the soldiers were killed, the Amazonian has escaped. With the map.

He decides to go out and retrieve it himself. In his experience, in the past months, with no competent generals, it’s always better if he takes it upon himself to do the important tasks.

He sets out for the polis—a  _ tiny _ one, he thinks, he’s conquered bigger things than this in his sleep—on Orion, bident in hand, frustrated and ready to wreak havoc.

From his vantage point in the sky, he sees the tell-tale sign of gold armor, reflected under the moon. The three-headed dog is in pursuit. Good.

There’s a man running next to the Amazon. Seraphim doesn’t have time for his opponents to be unifying, now. He throws his bident. He  _ misses _ . Seraphim’s frustration flares again as the human shoots  _ arrows _ at him, as if that would be able to stop him, and he  _ roars _ as he throws his bident again. He misses. Again.

_ Fuck _ . He doesn’t have the time for this. The Amazonian is long gone. There are people running toward the hills, so he swoops down to cut them off. Interrogation can be useful.

“My name is Seraphim,” he starts with, because Nympha had told him that people find more sympathy in things they can put names to. “I’m the leader of the People of Melidoni. The people you call demons.”

He tells them who he is looking for. Asks for a representative from their polis. As expected, it’s only when he offers to spare land and valuables, the only things that matter to a noble, that one steps forward.

The man identifies himself as Aratus Theogonis. Seraphim has spent hours poring over family genealogies of Acrisius, memorizing names, so that he will know who to look for. He keeps his tone even.

The noble looks hopeful, when Seraphim mentions Acrisius. It’s almost funny to see his face fall when Seraphim points to his eye, the one with the scar through it like lava under rock, and says, “He did this.”

The nobleman, Aratus Theogonis, disgusts Seraphim. The man is weak, tangibly afraid. Seraphim thinks it would be a kindness to make his children into demons. The man’s legacy would be a putrid one to inherit. It’s deeply satisfying, when a tracker tells him that they’ve picked up the Amazonian’s trail, to put the useless man out of his misery. 

Because fate hates Seraphim, they lose the Archon again; but he catches a glimpse of her cape, brilliant blue, out of the corner of his eye. It’s caught on the wall of a house. The two women inside deny knowing anything. The braver-looking of the two women tells Seraphim that she simply can’t explain the presence of the cape. It’s such a  _ bullshit _ excuse. 

Seraphim doesn’t offer either woman the choice between demonhood and death. He is angry, and frustrated, and he thinks death a fair punishment for collusion with the Amazonian. 

When he tells the woman that her prayers will not help her, watching her strange amulet with the blue and brown stones, she says that it is not herself that she is praying for. It’s strange. He raises his hand to kill her anyway.

A moment later, a man lunges out of the bushes at him. Seraphim takes him down easily. It takes only a moment to recognize the man who had escaped his grasp earlier. He looks young. Seraphim’s age. Seraphim would kill him and have done with it, but there’s a rage in the man’s eyes, a hatred, that reminds Seraphim of himself.

“Your eyes are full of hate,” he tells the man. “That’s good. Hate keeps a man alive.” There’s more he could say, but Seraphim has never been good with words. “Gives him strength.” 

He kills the woman, and offers the man a choice. Become one of them, or die. Seraphim thinks he would make a good soldier. A pair of demons carry the man away, and Seraphim continues his search for the Amazon. 

-

He has her cornered. The Amazonian. Finally. The chase has left him dirty and drenched, but there’s an overwhelming sense of  _ satisfaction _ that comes with having her backed into this cave.

“I must say, your reputation precedes you,” he starts, taking the moment to gloat. He doesn’t talk to many people, with his generals dead. He will allow himself this mockery of conversation. “And I’m not easily impressed.”

“Neither am I,” Alexia says, and her wound spontaneously heals. It looks  _ wrong _ . Every ounce of the danger-senses that Seraphim acquired from being raised by animals starts screaming. “Which is why I brought you here.”

Before Seraphim can react, she takes his bident, calls it to her hand in the way that only  _ he _ has ever been able to do, and she starts to  _ shift _ . To  _ change _ .

He’s pulled clear off of Orion by the force of her pull on his bident. He tumbles, coming to his feet once again. Seraphim hasn’t been properly afraid like this in years.

“Who are you?” he demands. This is not the Archon. It cannot be. She may be powerful, the result of her Amazonian heritage, but no Amazonian can heal themselves. Or shape-shift.

“I am the goddess Hera. Kneel.”

Seraphim knows that name. He’s heard stories of Hera—from the people in the cities as much as Ariana. He starts to back away. The thought of kneeling never even crosses his mind. He’s lived much of his life, now, in an attempt to overthrow the gods. He will never kneel to one.

“I said, kneel.” Her eyes glow, and suddenly Seraphim’s body is moving, not of his own accord. She seems satisfied when he is finally forced to the ground. “That’s better.”

“What do you want?” he growls at her. There’s no reason for a god to  _ play _ with him like this, to have him chase it only to beat him down at the end.

“I want what you want,” says Hera, as if it’s the simplest thing in the world. “Revenge. You can kill all the nobles you want, but it won’t bring you peace.”

“Is that so?” Seraphim knows it’s true. Somewhere deep down. It’s all he has, though—his anger, and the bodies of those who have wronged him in his wake.   
  
Hera looks like she’s laughing at him. “All this time you’ve been slaughtering them, little did you know that you yourself were the firstborn son of a mighty king.”

Seraphim glares at her. It’s a ridiculous notion. “My father was killed in battle.”

“That’s what your mother told you.”

“Why would she lie?” Seraphim demands.

“Because. She wasn’t your mother. Here. Let me show you,” Hera says, coming around behind him and pressing a hand to his head. Seraphim is loathe to let anyone get behind him, battle-scarred as he is, but he has no choice.

Seraphim sees white. Then he sees the sea.

“You killed twelve men on that beach,” Hera says, as if he needs her to remind her. That day is burned as clearly in his mind as Adriana’s death. It was a rebirth. It was a death.

“It’s Zeus’ fault,” Hera says, and  _ that  _ one is a surprise. 

Seraphim sees his mother, then, for the first time. Only for a split-second, before she’s gone.

“You should have been a king. Instead, all you’ve known is suffering and death. All you’ve brought to the world is suffering and death.” Hera places a hand to his cheek. It’s almost gentle. “Do you know the horrors of the Underworld?” Christos’ face flashes through Seraphim’s mind, staring up at the stars, dreaming of heroics and fallen gods. He had never even thought of going to Hades. “I can even help you with that.”

Hera’s palms, cradling his face, are warm, gentle. Seraphim has not known the touch of a mother in years, but he thinks that this is what it must be like. He’s tempted for a moment to give in—to believe that she cares, to press his face against her hands and enjoy the warmth of her touch. Still, if Seraphim has learned nothing else from the world, he has learned skepticism. People do not do things simply because they want to help others. It’s not how the world works. “What’s Zeus done to you that you so badly wish to turn me against him?” he asks. Then the hands are gone.

The news of his mother is like a line of battering rams. She is dead. He was the one to kill her. She had been praying for him, alongside his brother, the one he never knew he had, this entire time.

“If it’s true vengeance you seek…” Hera starts, voice lofty, “then set your sights on Zeus.”

Seraphim has never been good with words. All he can do is scream  _ no _ ; as he had done over the corpse of Ariana.

-

Seraphim’s world is shaken, but all he can do is continue on. Hera leads him to believe that the Amazonian’s next move will be to return to her old mentor; Seraphim’s map is well-encoded, with help from a few demons whose past professions had laid in spying and mapmaking, and she will not be able to read it on her own. Seraphim takes a group of demons and goes to the home of the centaurs.

It’s almost laughable, how easily Chiron agrees to sell out the Amazon for the sake of his people. Admirable, too; Seraphim respects the instinct to save others almost as much as he despises the noble instinct to leave them behind.

There’s  _ satisfaction _ , in finally having Alexia in his grasp, the soldier who has evaded him time and again. He defeats her, and in a final burst of bravery, Chiron rears up to stop her from being killed.

It’s an honorable thought. But Seraphim offers him a choice, the lives of his people or the life of the Archon, and Chiron tamely lets them take her away.

-

Seraphim had never thought before that he would ever work with a god, but Hera seems just as intent on bringing down the gods as he is. More, even. Seraphim does the work of the giant, but Hera has a vendetta against her husband, and she has dragged Seraphim along for the ride. 

Seeing her in his tent is not pleasant. She is a reminder of everything that she had told him, a reminder that Ariana was not his mother, that his real mother is dead, that he has a  _ brother _ out there, that he is  _ royalty _ , and Seraphim wants none of it. 

He can push it down, when she is not around. Still, though, the knowledge, the anger, the grief has made him more irritable than usual, and he kills humans and useless demons alike. The memories bubble up when he sees her face again.

She makes him kneel, once more, forcing him to his hands and knees, and Seraphim thinks that Christos had the right idea. It would be sweet, to overthrow the gods. 

Hera directs him to a sword, one that can cut through anything, and tells him to kill the man who is meant to wield it. The weapon thrums to life in Seraphim’s hands when he finds it, giving off a blue haze. He slices through a rock with ease. It feels good in his hands. He feels strong. 

Despite his growing hatred for the queen of the gods, he thinks that there are some benefits to working alongside her.

Except, no, his mind corrects—this is not a cooperation of equals. He is her pawn. She has shown him the way to this great weapon, but there is an expectation that follows it. He’s meant to kill someone, someone who was meant to have the sword. He’s meant to do Hera’s dirty work for her—and even their ultimate goal of reviving the giants will be for Hera’s sake. 

That twisted, gnarled thing in Seraphim’s heart grows ever larger.

-

It’s with something almost like amusement that Seraphim recognizes the man he is meant to kill. It’s the one that he couldn’t seem to hit, that night—the one that he’d taken to become a demon. Fate has brought them back together, he supposes, so that Seraphim might finally finish the job.

It’s fortuitous that Seraphim appears when he does, because the prisoner has started a riot on one of his ships. He arrives just in time to quell it. He will kill the man, he thinks, and then he will kill everyone else on the ship for the trouble. He has no time for mercy anymore. He has no compassion left. 

He confronts the man on one of the ships, ready to kill him, intent to do the deed, but it appears that fate still despises Seraphim and everything that he stands for, because lightning strikes between them. And then again, in the water. And again. It is more than coincidence. Something is protecting that man. 

Seraphim realizes that it is the interference of Zeus. It is the only thing it could be. For the moment, he swims desperately toward the shore, smelling of ozone. He has no intention to be electrocuted to death. No intention to drown. Seraphim may be damned, but he will not die—not yet.

On the shore, he sees a crow. Those damned things always seem to be around Hera, flocking to her, roosting near her. The sight of it angers him. He throws his bident at it. 

In a matter of seconds, Hera’s form flares into being, and the bident reverses direction. Seraphim barely manages to leap out of the way before something sends him flying backwards, fast and hard. He crashes through trees and trees and trees and then  _ rock _ , until he is battered and lying on a pile of rubble under a temple he has never seen before. 

Suddenly, his body starts glow. The feeling of moving without meaning to is sickeningly familiar, by now. Seraphim floats into the air, despite his struggles at the invisible force that holds him still.

Hera floats into the wreckage of the temple, huge and intimidating. “How  _ dare _ you strike a god?” she demands, and her voice reverberates.

Seraphim’s survival has hinged on being angrier than he is scared, and he intends to survive this, too. He has no intention to die, but he has no intention to hold his tongue, either. Hera  _ knows _ Zeus. She must have known what she was doing when she sent him off. Seraphim’s expression contorts into one of rage. “How dare you send me to kill a man  _ protected _ by one?” he demands, in return. His power is in his ferocity. Even if he wasn’t so furious with Hera, so angry at the gods, his snarling would have been the only way he knew to keep his dignity while suspended in the air. 

Hera regards him, cooly. She looks down on him. Seraphim recognizes the expression from nobles who spat on him and slashed open his face.

His expression contorts further. He is done with this. He does not need her help to overthrow the gods. He was doing fine on his own. “Find someone else to do your dirty work,” he spits out, with all the vitriol he can manage. “I’ve had enough.”

“Zeus has entered the fray,” Hera says, easily, “but it doesn’t change  _ my _ plans.” There is a moment of silence. Seraphim doesn’t respond. She continues. “Help me kill Zeus, and all I have promised you will be yours.”

Seraphim has no intention to agree, no intention to continue being her  _ pawn _ —until she says, “Including the location of your uncle Acrisius.”

Seraphim’s anger flares up once again, but not entirely at Hera. He growls. “Where is he?”

“First,” she announces, “I need you to find the Cauldron of Darkness.” Seraphim glowers. “Too many eyes are fixed on me. But you… can move more freely. Do that…” She crosses her arms, and the only word Seraphim can think of to describe her is  _ smug _ . “And the crown of the world will be yours.”

-

_ The bathhouse is misty and warm with steam. Seraphim watches, silent, from the roof, as Zeus relaxes further into the water. This is his chance. To kill the one responsible for the deaths of Ariana, his father, and his mother. _

_ He sends his bident arcing down, and it pins Zeus’ arm to the marble in a wonderful crunch of bone and rock. There is only enough time for the panic to register on Zeus’ face before Seraphim is upon him, sword through his neck; then, in a final, triumphant moment, he takes off Zeus’ head. _

_ Hera appears from behind the pillars of the bathhouse. Seraphim is surprised for a moment, but he supposes he always knew that she was there.  _

_ “Well done,” she tells him, and her voice is warm and approving. She sounds proud, not conniving or superior. “Now they’ll all kneel before you. How does it feel?” She reaches out, taking his face in her hands. The warmth of her palms is electrifying. “Good, doesn’t it.” _

_ She takes her hands away, turns away, and suddenly everything is  _ wrong _. _

_ Panic sets in. Seraphim does not know what exactly it is, but the air has changed. Hera starts to… to dissolve. “What is happening?” he asks, panicked, half addressing Hera and half addressing the universe. “No!” he cries, as Hera fades and twists into purple smoke, and his own body suffers the same fate. _

He awakes in a panic. There is a god standing over him, holding a black spirit in his hands. “The dreams of the Oneiri can’t be trusted,” Zeus tells him. “And neither can the goddess who sent them.”

Seraphim is thrust back into the world of memories, the way he was with Hera, that day. He curses his own fragility, unable to keep gods out of his head. 

What Zeus shows him is all the same as Hera, except that the blame is shifted. Suddenly, Hera is the villain of the story. Seraphim blinks, when he’s released into the present. He hates Hera. He is willing to believe that she has wronged him. What strikes him as untrue, however, is the complete lack of culpability from Zeus. He glares. 

“And why should I trust you?” he demands.

“Here.” Zeus tosses something at him—Seraphim thinks that it is a coin, for a moment, and is  _ enraged _ at the thought of Zeus tossing him a coin like some peasant boy on the street, but the marking on the little disc is not monetary. “Hera lords her promises over you so you'll do her bidding,” says Zeus. “I offer it freely. So that justice may be served.”

Seraphim squints up at him. “What is this?”

“It's where you'll find your vengeance,” Zeus says. And with that, his eyes glow brighter, until Seraphim can’t stand to look any longer, and the god disappears.

Seraphim has  _ had  _ it with the gods in his tent. He sighs, heavily, and collapses back onto his cot. 

“What would you do, Nympha?” he mutters, to the empty air. “If you were here?” He holds the coin up to examine it. He doesn’t know quite what he is asking of Nympha; maybe which god she would believe. Maybe whether she would believe a god at all. 

Christos would never have let himself become a pawn. He would never have let Seraphim become a pawn. Christos believed in their power, in their cause. (Something in Seraphim’s mind reminds him that his confidence was the thing to kill him in the end.)

The design on the coin looks like… a peak. Some sort of craggy mountaintop. Seraphim has resources. He has an army. He has people who know things about the world.

Zeus had said that this peak, wherever it is, would be the site of his vengeance. That could only mean…

Well. Seraphim doesn’t like to hope much, anymore. But he’s fairly sure it means that he’s found his accursed uncle. Acrisius.

-

There’s a sense of trepidation that fills Seraphim’s heart as he approaches the peak. Not hesitation, but… the idea of everything coming to an end, getting what he’s been striving for for so many years, it’s almost daunting. All these years, things have been stable. His life has been constant, not in that he always knew what was happening, or that he had a plan for what lay ahead, but that he had a driving force. Vengeance for his mo—Ariana, and vengeance for himself. 

Now, some creeping thread of doubt has him wondering if this is really what he wants. Bringing an end to the fury that has brought him this far. 

All his doubt vanishes when he sees the king’s face.

“There’s not much to say. I saw an opportunity and took it.” Acrisius looks weak. Old. It’s repugnant. “You would have done the same.”

Oh, how Seraphim misses this righteous anger when it’s gone. “I would never kill a child,” he spits.

Acrisius calls him weak. Seraphim  _ demolishes  _ him.

Seraphim is many things. He is determined. Angry. A monster. He is—or was—kind, when he has the mind for it. He is  _ not _ weak. He has assured himself this much, in every sacrifice he’s made to come here. He was weak once. He is not anymore. 

The cuts, the blood drawn, are satisfying, but they are not  _ enough _ . He takes fingers. The eye. He takes his retribution, but it is not enough, and his fists are itching with the urge to  _ smash _ something. Seraphim has never beaten a person to death, before. Not with his bare fists. The crunch of bone and rush of blood under his knuckles is unfamiliar and cathartic, in its violence. He is redoubling the pain of his mother—Ariana—the pain of her sister, his own pain, and this is vengeance, in knowing that Acrisius will finally, finally feel it.

Messengers rush to him just as he stands, bloody and grim in his triumph. 

The Amazonian and the man—his brother, he realizes now, the blue eyes to match the blue stone—have made it to the fields of the dead. They must have found a map, somehow—a message from Hera says as much. The giant’s corpse will need to be moved. Seraphim will need to act quickly.

Seraphim is an efficient leader, on his own. He gets done what needs to be done. He will do this in time. 

-

The inside of the earth is scarred through with molten lava, all stone and fire. It looks like Seraphim and his people. The outsiders fall in stark contrast. 

“This isn’t right,” one of them says, and Seraphim wishes he had the amusement needed to smirk.

He nudges Orion, and the manticore snarls helpfully, drawing the attention of the motley little human army. Well, mostly human. The Archon is among them. Seraphim clings to the feeling of power, as the outsiders see the group of demons he has brought with him.

He is strong. Powerful. He can protect what must be protected, now. He has agency, even under the thumb of a god.

Seraphim has never been good with words. It is fine. He’s not here to gloat, after all. He has… a proposition. He’d been right, the first time, after all. Heron has hate in his eyes. He’s strong. He would make a good ally. He slides easily off of Orion to say, “Looks like my god is more clever than your god.”

Orion snarls, next to him. Seraphim starts to descend the slope. 

“You moved the remains,” says the man. Heron. His brother. 

Seraphim stakes his bident in the soft rock. “I’m tired of being a pawn.” He looks up, meets the eyes of Heron, adorned in the rainements of the gods. “Aren’t you, brother?”

Seraphim does not know what he wants, from him. Not sympathy. Understanding, maybe. He does not expect Heron to default to his side at the behest of words that have never been his sharpest tool, but Heron must know, musn’t he? He must understand, must know what it’s like to have your life torn apart by the gods. He wears the symbols of Zeus, but Zeus was responsible for the death of their mother, as much as Hera. That much, Seraphim has decided.

“Why should they rule over us?” He continues. “They're more flawed than we are. Look at what they've done to us,” Seraphim says, meaning his demon body, meaning his dead mothers, meaning the brother he’s injured and tortured and never known. “They've ruined our lives!

Our mother is dead because of them!”

Heron looks down, eyes narrowed just slightly, and Seraphim doesn’t understand.

“Don't you want to avenge her death?” He asks, feeling something like desperation flooding over the gnarled thing in his heart. Seraphim has never had anything but a mother, and he doesn’t quite know what siblinghood implies, but he thinks that his plea might be effective when he says, “Join me, brother.”

“We can have our vengeance and end the reign of the gods,” he continues, because  _ vengeance  _ has been what he’s striven for all these years, and he knows now that though it might be bitter, it’s sweeter than having none at all. Heron must know. Must understand. They are twins, though they have never known each other; Heron must want vengeance. Like him. There must be  _ someone _ truly like him. 

He gestures out, entreatingly, and Heron narrows his eyes at him. “So you can rule?”

The rejection stings, in front of Heron’s forces and Seraphim’s own, but he forges ahead. “So that what happens to us never happens again!” With an exhale, he glances down. “This… is the only way.” Because it is. Because fate and the gods and humanity will never be kind to Seraphim, so he will carve out a place for himself in the world. A place for himself and Ariana, when he was small. A place for himself and his generals, before they were dead. Now… a place for himself, and his brother, and his people. For the demons are no less monstrous and misfortunate than Seraphim himself. 

“No, it's not,” Heron insists, taking a step forward. “Zeus can undo what's been done to you. He can convert you back.”

It becomes clear, then, that Heron does not understand. That he will never understand. Seraphim huffs. Turns away.  _ Undo what’s been done? _ Heron does not know what he has sacrificed to become this in the first place. Heron has never seen his human form, weak and malnourished and half-blind. Heron, apparently, has the strength of the gods; he’d had a mother, too, until the gods had interfered once more. He has never had to  _ struggle _ to be strong. To be loved. He simply was. 

Seraphim does not know what formalities of family bind them together, but he offers another chance. One more choice. Heron’s eyes bring back the memory of their biological mother, clutching an amulet with stones to match the both of their eyes. “For the sake of our mother, I will ask you one last time. Join me, or you'll leave me no choice.” He places a hand on his sword. A clear threat. If Heron will not join him, they cannot coexist. Seraphim does not wish to hurt him. He does not wish to kill his own brother, a brother who he could stand side-by-side with, but if Heron truly wants to change him back—if Heron truly considers him a monster, something to be fixed, there can be no cooperation. No reconciliation. “You are either with me… or against me.”

“If that is what the choice must be…” Heron narrows his eyes, his perfect, luminous blue eyes, a perfect copy of the father who bore him. “I’m against you.”

A fist closes tight around Seraphim’s heart. Seraphim does not like to hope, and it is for moments like this, when it is crushed. He should have known that his fortune was far too good, with the death of Acrisius, to allow for a reunion with a long-lost brother. What had he thought would happen? That Heron would accept him, join him, understand him, offer the love of family that Seraphim has wanted all these years? Silly. Foolish. Seraphim numbs the pain with his anger, once more, and snarls.

Zeus’ sword flares to life in his hands. He charges.

The battle that follows is not so much harrowing as enraging. Heron shoots the sword out of his hand, and Seraphim is forced to watch as more of his people burn purple until they are nothing but ash. Nympha’s face flashes through his mind, and he leaps onto Orion again, calling his bident to his hand to kill. He throws. Again. Again. Again. Blood and intestines spill. Humans are cleaved in half. Seraphim feels more the monster in battle than he ever does in peace, and he gives way to the instinct to snarl and destroy.

Heron and the remainder of his people, the Archon and a few others, flee for the exit. Seraphim barely dodges one of Heron’s arrows, and he should kill the man right there, but—

He kills one of the other humans. Something  _ cracks _ when his bident hits stone, and Seraphim realizes that the cave exit is about to collapse only moments before it does. He speeds toward the exit, thinking he will  _ make it _ ,  _ he has to _ , but then—it caves.

It is Hera, who frees him from the stone, because Seraphim can never live a moment without the humiliation of the gods. She demands that he do what she asked. He has still not found this cauldron of darkness. 

His heart twists in his chest. 

-

Orion is his only companion, over the sea. It is Orion’s flight that takes him half the way down into the water—then it is Seraphim’s lungs, stronger now than when he was human, that must take him the rest of the way. Into the cavern of Talos.

Seraphim thinks, for the first moment that the cauldron is in his hands, that he will be able to simply walk away. The giant metal warrior is old, after all. Perhaps it has stopped working. 

Then the warrior lights up. And Seraphim, as always, is left to fight for his life. 

His bident is useless. Seraphim tries to run, but Talos throws its sword, and he’s knocked away from the water. 

When Seraphim strikes a hit with the blue sword, Talos bleeds something gold and molten, like the fabled ichor of the gods. 

Seraphim slices its heel, and the warrior falls. He throws the sword, and it goes straight through the hand and head of the metal giant. Seraphim takes the cauldron, calls his bident to his hand, and runs.

He’s barely made it to shore when Hera comes to take the hard-fought winnings of his battle.

Hera calls the cauldron to her hand, and Seraphim looks on with something like horror. His goal is about to be realized, the resurrection of the giants, but it feels wrong, under Hera. He has been used, this whole time. It is not his victory. 

The purple of Hera’s power looks like the purple of a burning demon. 

The cauldron sends light arcing out into the sea. Seraphim watches as the giants arise, majestic and terrible, and there is no victory in the sight. 

-

He dreams of his fallen friends, the night before the final battle. In his dream, all the stars are falling. Nympha and Niklaus cling to each other, deaf to Seraphim’s shouting. Christos looks up at the sky, expression calm, as if there is nothing to do but accept his death at the hands of the stars he had loved so dearly.

Seraphim calls to them. Screams for them. He cannot move, and none of them hear him. He watches as they burn away with the rest of the world.

-

To his left, in the corner of his eye, Seraphim catches a glimpse of Hera, broken and bloody in the dirt. To his right, he sees Heron, flying away from Hera’s crows, the cauldron in his arms.

Well. There’s a clear plan here.

His bident makes easy work of Heron’s gryffon. Its head comes clean off. Seraphim catches his brother by the wrist, and hoists him up so that they are almost face to face. It’s so easy. It’s the kind of strength he never would’ve had, if he were human. 

“You really must choose sides more wisely,” he says, eyes narrowed at his brother’s defiant face. Heron could have been a winner. Could have been a king. Could have survived.

A giant has its hands on Zeus; there is a surge of  _ something _ in Seraphim’s heart as the god explodes into blue light. Heron cries, “No,” and Seraphim curls his lip at the despair in his voice. 

“You should have joined me when you had the chance,” he tells his brother, and with that final goodbye, he lets him fall. Seraphim is a survivor. He cannot form attachments that will get him killed. He cannot let opponents stand in his way. 

It is done. Heron is taken care of. Seraphim has the cauldron. Now—

Hera is reaching for Zeus’ crown. She starts to lift it, murmuring something, but Seraphim has no ears for her spells. He sends his bident flying down and severs her arm, and there is a rush of satisfaction seeing her broken and beaten down as he was. He retrieves his weapon, once on the ground, and twirls it, ready to kill this god, to take his final vengeance, to be more than the  _ pawn _ he’d been made into—

A flock of crows flies past, blocking his vision, distracting him. When Seraphim looks back, Hera is gone. But her arm remains. As does the gauntlet.

Climbing back onto Orion, donning the gauntlet, holding the cauldron aloft—Seraphim has felt power before, but this is  _ more _ . This is what Christos spoke of, when he dreamed of being a figure of legend, preserved in the stars. Seraphim has the cards in his hand. He is the power in this battle. He is the god, now.

“There’s no one left to stop me,” he crows, just before something knocks the cauldron out of his hand and someone attacks him from above. 

The man who attempts to grapple with him is strong, but he is human. Seraphim is a demon. He is  _ stronger _ . He easily breaks the man’s arm and throws him over his shoulder, sending him to his death below.

Because fate hates Seraphim, there is another human on a gryffon, who catches the falling man. Apparently, he thinks, as he sees Heron flying away with the Archon and the cauldron, no humans are capable of falling to their deaths today.

He calls his weapon back into his hand, but suddenly, something is wrong. Orion stalls in the air. And then he is falling. 

Seraphim is no lover of heights. The only thing that comes to mind, besides terror, is that he  _ refuses  _ to die like this.

They crash to the ground, and Seraphim spots the Archon, Alexia, rolling away. There is a moment, as he tries to catch his breath, that he pieces together the chain of events. Orion’s belly has been split open, and his guts spill over the ground. The Amazonian’s sword is bloody.

Seraphim has  _ nothing _ . Nothing but himself, his bident, and the manticore. He has lost too much to this fucking world. This death, this final loss… 

He sees red, as he so often does. It is the injustice of his life when his bident finally falls to the ground, after pushing the Archon back over so much space, and she is still alive. He wonders how much it will take for these people to  _ fucking  _ die. 

Heron’s attack comes from the sky. Seraphim only sees him a second before he strikes. He knocks an arrow out of the air, and throws his bident, only for Heron to grab it out of midair, strike him down, and punch him.

_ Strength of the gods, indeed. _

It’s not fair. It’s not fair. Seraphim has not done all of this,  _ lost _ so much,  _ become _ so twisted and monstrous, to be beaten down by a brother who has had everything that Seraphim has lacked. 

Heron pauses above him. Looks at Zeus’ shattered crown. There are tears pouring down his face, and Seraphim, bloodied and broken, wonders whether Heron does not want to hurt him, after all. Whether he truly wants to be brothers. Whether he will stop the violence, now. 

Heron hits him once more. Then again. Then again. 

Heron and Seraphim are not the same. Heron will never understand. He is weak. And Seraphim is strong.

Seraphim catches the next punch, while Heron is distracted, and then takes the chance to attack. Animal that he is, he plunges his claws into Heron’s face. He takes no pleasure in the resulting scream.

Seraphim pushes Heron to the ground. Throws him up against a rock, hard enough to crack ribs. He will not die here. He will not be  _ beaten _ here. He has lost too much. Nympha, Niklaus, Christos, Adriana, his mother, all of those demons have not died for him to lose to a pampered child of the gods. 

Heron retches, and Seraphim glowers, advances. He will be the victor, here. His vengeance will not have the bitter taste of failure. Heron throws a clumsy punch, and it is the easiest thing that Seraphim has done all day to step aside and pull Heron into a chokehold.

Seraphim calls his bident, and Heron, his accursed brother, with the last of his gods-given strength, catches it. Seraphim grits his teeth. He will wait. He can be patient. His strength, his willpower, is more than that of Heron’s. Heron will cave. Seraphim will survive. 

Heron stills. The bident takes its final plunge. And Seraphim has won. 

This victory is bittersweet, but it is victory nonetheless. Seraphim thinks he might even spare kindness; hold his brother, as he dies, so that he is not alone in his final moments. They are enemies, but they had no need to be. Not if Heron would just have denounced the gods. 

Then Heron is forcing the bident back through his own chest and into Seraphim’s, and the world explodes into pain.

Seraphim roars. He barely registers the stumbling steps that he takes back, as Heron anchors them both to a rock, to die speared by Seraphim’s own weapon. Seraphim spits blood. There’s so much blood. It runs down his face, down his chest. 

Desperately, he reaches for the bident. It will obey him. It always has. The bident is his truest weapon, a faithful weapon, and it does what he asks of it. He compels it away from him, but Heron holds fast, drives it home once more.

Seraphim’s will is stronger, though. The bident flies free of both their bodies. Heron turns to attack him, but even that god-given strength does not give him the ability of one more punch. He collapses forward. Seraphim catches him. 

Maybe it is the pain addling his brain, but Seraphim smiles, slightly. It has worked out. He has survived. He will hold his brother in his final moments, but Seraphim is the one who will walk out alive. He pulls Heron’s head back, to see his brother’s face, but what he sees instead are the eyes of a god. Zeus’ blue.

He barely has time to register the hand on his face before the lightning is tearing through him, burning him from the inside. He feels it arcing through his eye, his left eye, the demon eye, and he screams in agony. 

When it is done, when the pain fades for a blissful moment, Seraphim collapses. The last thing he feels is Heron’s arms. 

-

When Seraphim awakes, the only thing around him is mist. He looks around, panicked, but there is nothing there to pose a threat. He looks down. No gauntlet, on his right arm. No wound in his chest. He feels it to make sure, but his skin is whole again.

He holds out a hand, feeling for the presence of his bident. He calls it to his hand. Waits. It has to be here somewhere—he can feel it, drawing nearer and nearer.

He hears it whistling through the air, then hears it thud into a hand. Someone else’s hand. 

“You’ve used my bident well,” calls a voice from the dark.

Seraphim narrows his eyes. He doesn’t know what is going on, but he is whole again. He is strong. He will survive this. “Who are you?”

A figure glides out of the mist. A god, if the stature is anything to go by. 

“Hades,” the god says, and Seraphim’s blood goes cold as he realizes that he can no longer feel his heart beat.

The mist clears, and Seraphim turns to see what can only be the underworld, glowing with magma. Fear strikes something cold into his heart. An eternity of suffering lies before him. 

“It’s far worse than you can imagine,” Hades says, almost contemplatively. “But I can help you. Save you from the fate that awaits you there.”

Seraphim has heard this before. With Hera. She’d been lying. All the gods do is lie. But the terror that fills him, looking over the landscape of hades… he doesn’t know what to believe. 

“I just need you to do one thing for me,” Hades says. Seraphim’s eyes dart over the fiery pits. His mind whirls.

“Kneel.”

Seraphim  _ screams _ . 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> in conclusion: i love seraphim

**Author's Note:**

> hope you liked it!!! pwease do leave a comment n kudos or whatever you feel up to. i have SO many thoughts about seraphim (and hera haha) so feel free to ask stuff!! i take a while to respond to comments but i promise i'm reading them asap and i love every one of them <3
> 
> if you liked this, chances are you'll like my similar (albeit much shorter) hera fic. it's the first one in this series xoxo


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